Simply Sentiment Support

Topics

System Requirements

  • Simply Sentiment can only run on the Windows version of Microsoft Excel (2010 or later)
  • Simply Sentiment is not compatible with the Mac version of Excel
  • Simply Sentiment is designed to work with the English language only 
  • Known Issues: An issue has been experienced by users running the 64 bit version of Microsoft Office 2010 where the add-in loads but will not work correctly and error messages are generated. We are currently exploring possible solutions but at this time have no estimated resolution timescale

Overview of Simply Sentiment

Simply Sentiment is an Excel add-in (.xlam file) that enables you to carry out sentiment analysis on any textual data within an Excel spreadsheet. It turns difficult to analyse, unstructured textual data into numeric data that you can easily incorporate into your day-to-day analysis.

Because Simply Sentiment is a standard Excel add-in which doesn’t make any changes to your system, you can install simply Sentiment without Administrator Priviledges. If you are installing Simply Sentiment on a corporate computer, in most cases you will be able to do this yourself without any involvement from your IT department.

Simply Sentiment will identify positive and negative sentiment in any text that you have in Excel, and generate a set of numeric scores based on this analysis. For every item of text analysed, Simply Sentiment outputs the following information:

    • (option) a colour coded version of the original text string indicating where sentiment has been detected
    • a score representing the total positive sentiment in the text
    • a score representing the total negative sentiment in the text
    • a score representing the overall sentiment in the text (positive – negative)
    • a text lable indicating the overall polarity of the text (positive, negative or neutral)

In addition, Simply Sentiment can produce a dashboard containing a graphical representation of the overall data processed;

Simply Sentiment can also generate a count of the sentiment words and phrases found in your text that you can use for further analysis or to generate a word cloud using any online cloud service e.g. www.wordle.net or www.wordart.com

You can also take the output from Simply Sentiment into your favourite analysis software.

The design philosophy behind Simply Sentiment is ease of use – everything is done within Excel, you simply select a worksheet range containing the text you want to analyse and click the Extract Sentiment button on the Excel Ribbon.

Simply Sentiment uses an advanced lexicon-based approach to sentiment analysis and has several advantages over other commercial products:

  • You don’t need to be a data scientist to use Simply Sentiment. There is no programming to learn or ‘training’ to carry out – anyone who can use Excel will quickly become comfortable using Simply Sentiment
  • All of the analysis is carried out on your computer with no data being transmitted to the cloud. This makes Simply Sentiment 100% safe and secure. If you need to process sensitive information or are concerned about GDPR implications, then Simply Sentiment is an ideal solution
  • There are no per item transaction fees with Simply Sentiment. Unlike every other major commercial sentiment analysis product on the market, you can process as much data as you like with Simply Sentiment at no additional cost. This makes budgeting a breeze
  • Simply Sentiment is very easy to install as it requires no special admin privileges and makes no changes to the registry or any other files on your computer. This means you can be up and running with Simply Sentiment in no time at all, and as a corporate user there is no need to get your IT department involved to install Simply Sentiment

Simply Sentiment is designed to work ‘out-of-the-box’ with most data, but also has a number of features that allow you to customise the sentiment algorithms to better suite your individual data domains

Simply Sentiment can deal with a wide range of sentiment bearing words and phrases, including negations (e.g. not happy), double negatives (e.g. I don’t dislike him), sentiment amplification (e.g. very happy), emoticons, and idioms (e.g. it does what it says on the tin)

These lexical rules are contained in a separate configuration file that is automatically downloaded when you first install Simply Sentiment. Updates to this file are made regularly and your Simply Sentiment add-in will regularly check for newer versions and automatically download them to ensure you always benefit from the latest version

Licence Types

The licence types available for Simply Sentiment are explained below:

Named User Licence – this licence allows a single named user to use Simply Sentiment on any computer. This licence is ideal for individuals or small teams who don’t use shared computers. Discounts are available for multiple purchases of this licence

Multi-User Licence – A multi-user licence enables unlimited users on the network at a single site to access the products. Also, individual copies are not locked to an individual user so multiple users can access the products on the same computer. This licence is ideal if you have large teams or teams using shared computers working on the same project

Simply Sentiment is licenced on an annual basis

Discounts are available for educational and non-profit organisations

Installing Simply Sentiment

The Simply Sentiment add-in is installed just like any other Excel add-in:

    1. Extract the files from the SimplySentiment2.zip file to a location on your computer e.g your Desktop
    2. Start Excel and ensure a blank workbook is open
    3. If you already have a version of the Simply Sentiment add-in installed, please uninstall (delete) this before proceeding
    4. Click the File tab, click Options, and then click the Add-Ins category
    5. In the Manage box, click Excel Add-ins, and then click Go. The Add-Ins dialog box appears
    6. Click Browse, locate the SimplySentiment2.xlam add-in file, click Open and then click OK
    7. Excel will ask you if you want to copy the add-in to your add-ins folder. Click Yes

When installed you will see a new item under the CX Data Science tab on the Excel Ribbon called Simply Sentiment

Congratulations! Simply Sentiment is now installed and ready to use

First Use - Licence Activation

The first time you use Simply Sentiment after installation you will be asked to enter your product key:

  1. Ensure that your computer has an internet connection
  2. With any workbook open, click the Simply Sentiment tab, and then click the Extract Sentiment button on the ribbon
  3. Enter your email address / username and product activation key exactly as supplied in the email from us, and then click Activate
  4. The latest configuration file will be downloaded automatically in the background
  5. The configuration file data will be copied into the add-in, this takes a few seconds
  6. The main Simply Sentiment dialog box will appear. Click Cancel

Performing sentiment analysis with Simply Sentiment

  1. First, select the worksheet cells that contain your textual data. In this example we’re going to use Tweets.
  1. Select the Simply Sentiment tab on the Excel Ribbon, and then click the Extract Sentiment button
  1. After a few seconds the main Simply Sentiment dialog box will appear. This may take longer the very first time you use Simply Sentiment as a number of configurations and checks are make in the background
  1. Check that the range you selected is correct
  2. Optionally, you can also select a column containing data categories, to enable Simply Sentiment to produce a grouped summary of the final sentiment analysis. In this example we selected worksheet column A
  3. Click the Start Processing button
  4. Wait while Simply Sentiment processes your textual data. Progress is displayed in the bottom left status area of the main Excel window
  1. When Simply Sentiment has finished processing your data the “Sentiment Analysis Complete” dialog box will appear
  2. A number of new columns of data will be inserted to the right of your original data
  3. For each item in your original data Simply Sentiment calculates the following:
    • (Optional) a copy of the original text, colour coded to indicate sentiment found
    • Positive Sentiment Score: this represents the strength of positive sentiment in the original data
    • Negative Sentiment Score: this represents the strength of negative sentiment in the original data
    • Overall Score: Positive score minus Negative Score
    • Polarity Label: A text label that indicates whether the Net Score is Positive, Negative or Neutral. Neutral sentiment occurs where there is both positive AND negative sentiment in the original text but the scores for each are very similar. If no sentiment was found in the original text a label of “No Sentiment” will appear here. If no valid data was found in the original text a label of “No Data” is added. You can adjust the neutral threshold to better suit your individual data sets in span class=’boldit’>Settings.
    • Total No. Words: A count of the number of individual words (including web and email addresses) in each item of text

The Simply Sentiment Dashboard

The Dashboard contains useful summary information based on the text analysed:

The Dashboard shows the following information:

  • TOTAL ITEMS PROCESSED: pie chart showing a summary of the main sentiment classification groups (Positive, Neutral, Negative, No Sentiment & No Data) from the data processed
  • NET SENTIMENT: bar chart showing the proportion of sentiment bearing items (positive, neutral or negative) from your data, together with the Net Sentiment, which is calculated as follows:
  • AVERAGE NUMBER OF WORDS PER ITEM OF TEXT: bar chart showing the average number of words in each item of text processed split by sentiment classification (positive, neutral, negative, no sentiment and no data)
  • PERCENTAGE CONTAINING A URL OR EMAIL ADDRESS: bar chart showing the proportion of each sentiment classification group that contain either a URL or an email address
  • TAG CLOUD – ALL SENTIMENT: word / tag cloud showing the top x sentiment bearing words and phrases from your text. The size of the word or phrase relates to its frequency (the larger the front size the more frequently that word or phrase appears in your base data). The colour of the word indicates its polarity (Red = negative and Green = positive). The different shades of red and green help to visually identify different words or phases that have the same polarity and are next to each other
  • TAG CLOUD – POSITIVE SENTIMENT: As above but only for words and phrases that have positive sentiment
  • TAG CLOUD – NEGATIVE SENTIMENT: As above but only for words and phrases that have negative sentiment

Note: The number of words and phrases shown in each of these tag clouds can be changed in Settings. This must be done before the Dashboard is generated. Changing these settings will not affect an existing dashboard

To generate the Dashboard automatically each time you extract sentiment with Simply Sentiment, make sure that the Automatically generate output workbook checkbox is checked in Settings

If you don’t have this checkbox ticked you can still generate the dashboard immediately after sentiment has been extracted by clicking on the Generate Summary WB button on the ribbon. This will immediately produce the dashboard and wordcount list as a separate Excel workbook.

Sentiment Word Counts

Simply Sentiment can generate a list of all the sentiment bearing words and phrases in your text together with the frequency that they occur. This list can be used to produce further analysis e.g. word frequency histograms and charts etc. You can use this data in many online word cloud generators such as www.wordle.net or www.wordart.com. The list includes a ready formatted string that can be used in the advanced area of www.wordle.net to produce colour coded word clouds for all the sentiment words in your text, just the positive ones or just the negative ones

To use www.wordle.net to produce a word cloud with your data:

  1. Select and copy the appropriate data under the Wordle Advanced String heading
  2. In your web browser, navigate to www.wordle.net
  3. On the Wordle home page click the Advanced menu
  4. Paste your data into the Weighted words with hex colours box
  5. Click Go

Note: Wordle requires a browser that supports Java NPAPI plug-ins (Safari or Internet Explorer) and will not run on Google Chrome

To generate a sentiment word count automatically each time you extract sentiment with Simply Sentiment, make sure that the Automatically generate output workbook checkbox is checked in Settings

If you don’t have this checkbox ticked you can still generate the list immediately after sentiment has been extracted by clicking on the Generate Summary WB button on the ribbon. This will immediately produce the dashboard and wordcount list as a separate Excel workbook

Customising the sentiment taxonomy

While Simply Sentiment can be used very effectively ‘out-of-the-box’ you can also add your own custom sentiment words/phrases and associated sentiment scores. This is useful if you are analysing text from a domain where the meaning of words differs from the norm, or if there are sentiment bearing words or phrases in your text that are not being identified correctly by Simply Sentiment

You can even use this feature to override the built-in sentiment scores for individual words & phrases if they are not appropriate to the domain you are analysing

To access this feature click on the View/Modify button in the Custom Rules group on the Simply Sentiment ribbon

To add a new rule, enter the rule and score in the Add a new custom rule section and click Add

Continue to add new rules

To save the new rules you have added click on the Save Changes button

The format for creating custom rules is as follows:

  • You can enter a single word or a short phrase
  • You can use a wildcard character ‘*’ at the beginning or end of a word or phrase. This will force an inexact match. For example entering the word flood* will match any instances of words that start with flood i.e. flooded, flooding etc
  • You can only use the wildcard character at the very beginning or very end of a text string
  • Enter a score for each new rule you create. The score gives the rule either positive or negative polarity. You can enter any number between -1 and +1. The number represents the strength of the sentiment attached to the word or phrase
  • Custom rules entered here take priority over any matching built in rules. This means that you can change the default polarity and sentiment associated with any built in rule
  • Capitalisation of custom rules has no effect. All rules should be entered in lower case

To delete a custom rule, select the rule from the list and click Delete. Click Save Changes when you are finished adding or deleting rules to commit all changes

If you click Cancel any changes will be lost

To delete all custom rules, select click Delete All. Click Save Changes when you are finished adding or deleting rules to commit all changes

You can create different sets of custom rules depending on the data you are analysing. You can easily save these as separate files that can be loaded when needed

To save the current set of custom rules:

  1. Click the Save Rules button in the Custom Rules group on the ribbon
  2. Enter a name for the file and click Save

To load a custom rules file:

  1. Click the Load Rules button in the Custom Rules group on the ribbon
  2. Select the file you want to load and click Open

Updating the main sentiment database

Simply Sentiment will automatically check periodically for any updates to the main sentiment configuration file and download a newer file if one is available

You can manually check for updates at any time by clicking the Update Config File button on the Simply Sentiment ribbon

Settings

Click the Settings button on the Simply Sentiment ribbon to access various settings:

  • Main Dashboard
    • This section contains settings to change the number of words that are plotted in the Dashboard word clouds. Changes to these settings will apply to subsequent Dashboards only
  • Sentiment Word Counts
    • You can specify the hex colour codes for the www.wordle.net output column on the word count tab in the summary output
    • By checking the Include emoticons checkbox, all emoticons identified in your text will be included in the word count list and the Dashboard tag clouds
  • Other Settings
    • By checking the Generate a color coded (by sentiment) text string checkbox, Simply Sentiment will colour code a copy of each item of the original text to indicate the polarity (positive or negative) of all sentiment bearing words and phrases
    • The Neutral threshold for sentiment labels number changes the polarity labels added to each item of text. Each item of your text is analyses and scored based on the sentiment found within the text string. Items that have a very small overall positive or negative score can be classed as broadly Neutral. The threshold number entered here determined when the Neutral polarity label is added rather than the Positive or Negative label. For example when the neutral threshold is set at 0.1, and text with an overall sentiment score of between -0.1 and + 0.1 will be labelled as Neutral
    • Note: Changing the neutral threshold does not change how each item of text is scored, it only changes the polarity label that is applied

Word cloud stop list

You can prevent certain words from appearing on the Dashboard word cloud by entering them in the Word Cloud Stop List dialog box

To access this dialog box, click the Word Cloud Stop List button in the Output Options group on the ribbon

Enter stop words in the Add a new stop word or phrase section and click Add

Note: Word cloud stop words will be applied the next time you run Simply Sentiment. They will not be applied to any existing Dahsboard word clouds

Generate Workbook Summary

After you have run Simply Sentiment against a selection of text, you can click the Generate Summary WB button on the ribbon to generate a new workbook containing:

  • Dashboard
  • Word count list
  • Grouped summary (optional)

You can set the summary workbook to be generated automatically in Settings

Grouped Summary

Simply Sentiment can automatically generate a grouped summary of the sentiment from your data if you specify a column containing data to group by. An example of a grouped summary is shown below:

To produce this summary you must specify a grouping column in the main Simply Sentiment dialog

The grouped summary will appear in the separate summary workbook that can be produced automatically or manually after each run of Simply Sentiment

Updating your version of Simply Sentiment

If you already have a version of Simply Sentiment installed on your system, the safest way to update it is to remove the SimplySentiment.xlam file from your system and then install the new one.

Important, if you have created custom sentiment rules, please ensure that you save these before proceeding by clicking on the Save Rules button on the Simply Sentiment Excel Ribbon. Once you have updated Simply Sentiment you can load these rules back into Simply Sentiment by clicking the Load Rules button and selecting the appropriate custom rules file

Uninstall Simply Sentiment

  1. Start Excel
  2. Click the File tab, click Options, and then click the Add-Ins category
  3. Click on the Simply Sentiment entry in the list of Active Application Add-ins
  4. The full file path for the add-in is shown below the Add-ins list. Make a note of this
  5. From Windows Explorer, browse to the location of the add-in and delete the SimplySentiment.xlam file
  6. In Excel, click the File tab, click Options, and then click the Add-Ins category
  7. Click the Go… button next to Manage: Excel Add-ins
  8. Simply Sentiment will still appear in the list of Add-ins. Select Simply Sentiment and a warning message will appear. Click Yes
  9. Simply Sentiment is now removed from your system