Business Tutorial: Bloomberg

The Bloomberg terminal located in Pardee is available to all BU students.

The following physical Bloomberg terminals are available to Questrom students: 

• 7 located in HAR427 (Graduate Resource Center) only open to Questrom graduate students.
• 8 located in HAR328 (Open Access Lab) open to all Questrom students.

The Bloomberg terminals each have a strict monthly data downloading limit (exporting data to Excel). Questrom Students do not have to ask Pardee library staff permission prior to downloading from terminals outside the library, but be aware these terminals may exceed their limit before the end of the month. Students can use the Screenshot function to capture data without affecting the data downloading limit. This function enables students to email screenshots to themselves. Students can take multiple screenshots in order to capture the data that they need.

If logging into the Questrom terminals, students will need to install the Bloomberg API plug-in prior to downloading data into Excel. If Bloomberg API has not been installed, the data download instructions will not work.

Students will need to repeat these steps every time they log into a new terminal in either of the Questrom labs.

1. Double click the Bloomberg icon on the desktop of the machine to launch Bloomberg.
2. Once Bloomberg is open, click on <Enter/GO> to bring up the login screen. 
3. Log into Bloomberg with your Bloomberg login name and password.
4. On the left-hand side of the bottom taskbar, click on the Starticon. Go to the Bloomberg folder in the Start menu and click on the Install Office Add-Ins icon. 

5. Click on the Install button in the Installing Bloomberg Office Add-ins box. You should see a message that says Bloomberg Excel add-in, Bloomberg PowerPoint add-in and Bloomberg Word add-in have been added to your profile. Click on the OK button under the message. Click the Close button.

If one or more of these add-ins (Excel, PowerPoint, or Word) does not finish installing, you will need to click on the Install button again. If any of the add-ins are still not installed, you will need to follow the steps for running the API Environment Diagnostics.

6. On the left-hand side of the bottom taskbar, click on the Starticon. Go to the Bloomberg folder in the Start menu, then click on API Environment Diagnostics. 

Click the Start button in the pop-up diagnostics window, and let it run.

Then click the Repair button to fix any issues. Click OK in the Bloomberg Diagnostics box under Repair Completed. Click Close.

7. Open Excel and the Bloomberg tab should now be available on the Excel toolbar. 

If the Bloomberg tab does not appear, close Excel and repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 again. If there is an issue with downloading the data when using the Bloomberg Spreadsheet Builder, repeat step 6. These steps will need to be followed every time that you log into a new Bloomberg terminal in the Questrom Labs.