Open the Refinitiv Workspace Excel Add-in.
Click on the Refinitiv tab and Sign In with your Refinitiv user ID and password if you have one (Professors and RA) or ask the Library staff for password (students and staff).
Make sure you are connected (online). The Refinitiv Workspace tab is now active and you are ready to use Datastream.
Click on Datastream Formula (FX) to display the formula builder. Here you can search for Static or Historical Time Series data.
Time Series Request
The Time Series request function allows you to collect historical data over a period, for example, the daily share price for Apple from 1st January 1990 to 31st December 2010.
To find data using the Time Series Request, click on the Series Editor to open the Find Series dialogue box.
Click on the Find Series and enter the entity name or Datastream symbol for the business, economic indicator indicators etc.
When you are done, click OK to add your selection to the series list.
Next use the Datatype Editor to select your datatypes (variables) and click OK to add.
Set Date range
For historical data enter the number of years, for example if 5 years historical data is required, enter -5Y in the From field.
Data Frequency
Select the appropriate Frequency. Depending on the variable, the frequency can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly.
Options
In the options field the Display Row and Column Titles are pre-selected. Check in the boxes to select the other options such as transpose data.
You are now ready to download your data. Click on Insert at the bottom right of the screen to begin the download.
Static Request
The Static Request function can be used to request data for a specific date, e.g. search for the share price, dividend yield and market value for Amazon on Monday 1st February 2010.
You can also use Static request to collect information such as sector industrial categories of the FTSE100 list of companies.
To use the Static Request, from the Datatypes/Expression, click on the pull down and select As of. You can then use the series and datatype editors to select your entities and variables.
