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The connection between a data mining tool and Excel (and more generally spreadsheet) is a very important issue. We had addressed many times this topic in our tutorials. With hindsight, I think the solution based on add-ins for Excel is the best one, both for SIPINA and for TANAGRA . It is simple, reliable and highly efficient. It does not require developing specific versions. The connection with Excel is a simple additional functionality of the standard distribution. Prior to reaching this solution, we had explored different trails. In this tutorial, we present the XL-SIPINA software based on Microsoft's OLE technology. At the opposite of the add-in solution, this version of SIPINA chooses to embed Excel into the Data Mining tool. The system works rather well. Nevertheless, it has finally been dropped for two reasons: (1) we were forced to compile special versions that work only if Excel is installed on the user's machine; (2) the transferring time between Excel and Sipina usi

The data importation is a bottleneck for Data Mining Tools. The majority of users are working with a spreadsheet tool such as Excel, mainly in the coupling with specialized software for data mining (see KDnuggets polls ). Therefore, a recurring issue for users is "how to send my data from Excel to SIPINA?" It is possible to import different types of formats into SIPINA. About Excel workbooks, one particular device has been implemented. An add-in is automatically copied to the computer during the installation process. It must be integrated into Excel. The add-in incorporates a new menu into Excel. After selecting the data range, the user only has to activate it, this leads to the following: (1) SIPINA starts automatically, (2) the data are transferred via the clipboard and (3) SIPINA considers the first row of the range of cells corresponds to the names of variables, (4) columns with numerical values of the variables are quantitative (5) columns with alphanumeric values are ca

The "tanagra.xla" add-in for Excel contributes to the wide diffusion of Tanagra. The principle is simple. It is to embed a Tanagra menu in Excel. Thus the user can run statistical calculations without having to leave the spreadsheet. It seems simplistic. But this feature facilitates immensely the work of data miner. Indeed, the spreadsheet is one of the most used tools for preparing dataset (see KDNuggets Polls: Tools / Languages for Data Cleaning - 2008). By embedding the data mining tool in the spreadsheet environment, it avoids to the practitioner the tedious and repetitive manipulations: importing the dataset, exporting the dataset, checking the compatibilities between data file formats, etc. The installation and the use of the "tanagra.xla" add-in under the previous versions of Office are described elsewhere (Office 1997 to Office 2003). This description is obsolete for the latest version of Office because the organization of the menus is modified for these v