Users often include EViews output in external documents for presentation or publication. Like most programs, EViews offers the ability to copy-and-paste from EViews into other applications. Images and data transferred in this manner are static copies which are disconnected from the source workfile and application. If you wish to make changes in the appearance of the output in your document, you must first make the changes inside EViews and then redo the copy-and-paste. Furthermore, changes in the source within EViews do not produce corresponding changes in the external document.

Fortunately, EViews also supports the use of OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) technology. OLE allows for linking or embedding of EViews objects in third-party software application documents, including, among many others, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

You may use OLE to paste links to EViews objects in your external document so that the underlying information is tied to the EViews workfile. Then, any time modifications are made in EViews, the changes may be pushed to the objects in your document. Alternately, you may use OLE to embed graph and table output in external documents so you may later modify the appearance of the output using EViews.

Suppose, for example, you have created a report in Microsoft Word based on EViews results using monthly data from January 2012 through June 2012. The report contains data, tables and graphs copied from EViews.

The following month, you receive data for July 2012, and update your EViews workfile sample, tables, and graphs to incorporate the new information. If you had included the results in Microsoft Word using simple copy-and-paste, you would need to redo the copy-and-paste of the EViews results. If instead you use OLE to link your results, your Microsoft Word document would be updated to reflect the changes with no recopying required. YOu don’t even need to have your document open at the same time you are making changes in EViews. Your changes can be passed to the linked results the next time you open your Microsoft Word document.

Similarly, you might have a Microsoft Word report where periodic updating is not required, but where you make occasional changes the color of the graph lines and the text fonts. If you include the results using simple copy-and-paste, you will need to make the cosmetic changes in EViews and then redo the copy-and-paste. If instead you use OLE to embed the results, you could simply reopen the copy from within the external application, launching EViews to make the desired changes. The results would automatically be updated without requiring another copy-and-paste.