Overview of profiles

Each Minitab profile stores all the changes that you make in File > Options and View > Customize, in addition to any custom date/time formats, custom text lists for Autofill, and custom value order settings for text data.

You can save and manage multiple profiles. For example, if you create a weekly report that includes graphs that are smaller than the default size, you can create a custom profile and use it each week to create the smaller graphs. Then, you can reactivate the default profile to create graphs at their normal size.

You can also import and export profiles so that users can share the same group of Minitab settings and customizations on multiple computers.

Note

Profiles from previous releases of Minitab are partially compatible. The preferences that you set using the Options dialog box are imported. However, any customizations that you made to the menus or toolbars are not imported.

Create a profile

  1. Set the options that you want to include in the profile. For example, do any of the following:
    • To customize the default behavior for Minitab features and analyses, choose File > Options.
    • To customize menus, commands, toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts, choose View > Customize.
    • To create a custom value order for text columns, select a text column, then right-click and choose Column Properties > Value Order. For more information, go to Change the display order of text values in Minitab output.
  2. Choose File > Manage Profiles.
  3. Beside Available profiles, click the New button and type a name for the profile.
  4. Use the left arrow button to move all profiles that are under Active profiles to Available profiles.
  5. Select the new profile and use the right arrow button to move it to Active profiles.
  6. Click OK.

Manage your profiles

  1. Choose File > Manage Profiles.
  2. Do any of the following:
    Enable a profile
    Under Available profiles, select the profile and click the right arrow button to move it to Active profiles. Under Active profiles, select the profiles that you want to disable and move them to Available profiles.
    Delete a profile
    Move the profile to Available profiles and click the Delete button .
    Export a profile
    Select the profile from the Available profiles and click Export to save the profile as a registry file (*.reg).
    Import a profile
    Click Import and browse to the profile file (*.reg).
    Note

    More than one profile can be active at a time. Profiles at the top of the list have precedence over profiles lower in the list.

  3. Click OK.

Specify the toolbars for a profile

You can specify the toolbars to appear for each profile.

  1. Choose File > Manage Profiles.
  2. Make sure that the profile that you want to change appears under Available profiles or Active profiles.
  3. On the Toolbars tab, in one of the Toolbars available in, select the profile that you want to change.
  4. Select a toolbar and click the arrow keys to move it to or from the profile. Repeat this step until the profile contains the set of toolbars that you want.
  5. Click OK in each dialog box.

Disable your profiles for the current session

To use the Minitab default settings without losing your current settings, you can temporarily disable your profiles.

  1. Choose File > Manage Profiles.
  2. Write down all the profiles listed under Active profiles in the order that they appear.
  3. Click the left arrow button to move all profiles under Active profiles to Available profiles.
  4. Click OK.
  5. Use Minitab with the default settings.
  6. To return to your settings, complete the following steps to enable your profiles:
    1. Choose File > Manage Profiles.
    2. Click the right arrow button to move the profiles that you wrote down from Available profiles back to Active profiles. Use the up and down arrow buttons to put the profiles in their original order.
    3. Move NewProfile and any other profiles that were not in the original list from Active profiles to Available profiles.
    4. Click OK.

Delete your profiles

This process permanently removes any custom settings from the registry and restores the default profile settings.

Note

Reinstalling Minitab does not change the current custom settings.

  1. Close Minitab.
  2. Browse to and double-click the file RMD.exe. By default, this file is in C:\Program Files\Minitab\Minitab 22.