It’s the holiday season, a time for volunteering and gift giving…and sharing! In that same spirit, I thought it would be a perfect time to talk about sharing in Minitab. As you may have picked up from other blog postings (see Stats Cat’s post on Minitab customization), there are lots of ways you can customize your Minitab to save time and create great looking presentations. You can spend hours going through all of Minitab’s options choosing just the right settings to make your graphs and statistical output pop. It would be a shame if you couldn’t share all that hard work with your colleagues and coworkers!
To export your hard-earned settings, open Minitab and go to Tools > Manage Profiles. To export your currently active profile, click the left arrow button to move MyProfile to the Available Profiles box. If you wish to rename a profile before exporting, double-click it and enter a new profile name. With the profile selected, click Export and then choose a location to save it. You now have a saved registry file (*.REG) that other users can import and activate.
So you send your .reg profile to your most favorite coworker (or your second PC) and need to upload it into Minitab. Simply go back in to Tools > Manage Profiles menu and click Import. Select the new profile .reg file and Open. To activate the profile, choose it and click the right arrow button to move it from Available Profiles to Active Profiles. All profiles in Active Profiles are active. If you want your new profile to override existing profiles click the up arrow to move it upward in the profile hierarchy. Click OK in the Manage Profiles box and…Viola! You’ve successfully given the gift of Minitab custom settings!