Introduction to Bloomberg  Tags: bloomberg business  

In Excel, from the top menubar, go to Bloomberg > Help to see the Help documentation for more assistance in using the API.

BU < GO > will take you to Bloomberg University where you can watch online tutorials of how to use the Excel API. NOTE: as of 14 August 2008 the videos show the old interface for the Excel API and may not cover all functionality of the new version.

Use BBXL < GO > in the Bloomberg terminal to find cheatsheets, pre-programmed spreadsheets, demo-spreadsheets, and explanation of error messages.

API stands for application progamming interface.  What the Bloomberg Excel API allows you to do is to pull data from Bloomberg through Excel rather than the regular Bloomberg terminal interface.  This can be very helpful for example when you are pulling large sets of data or comparing companies on a variety of factors.

One of the easiest ways to import data through the API is to use the Bloomberg Data Wizard.

You can search for static data and data sets using the Market, Reference, Analytical, Data Sets option; for time series data using the Historical End of Day option; and intraday data using the Historical Intraday option.

Bloomberg help is available 24 hours-a-day.

Hit the green < HELP > key twice and a chat window will open. Type in your question and a Bloomberg support specialist will assist you.