At last night's Toolkit 6 User Group webinar, there were lots of questions about using the Company-Specific web sites feature in the program, so I thought that I'd follow up with some instructions and tips on using this function.

Whenever you have company forms (like the Stock Study) open in Toolkit 6, the Web button on the top toolbar provides you with access to a list of web sites. These web site addresses can be entered in such a way that when you select one of them, your browser will open and go to that site -- but specifically to the page on the site with information about the particular company that you have open in Toolkit. This is a significant, convenient time-saving trick to perform additional company research while you're analyzing a company. But it does require a bit of know-how in order to get it working properly in Toolkit 6. (The Toolkit manual includes instructions in the "Getting the Most Out of Toolkit 6" chapter.)

With Toolkit 6 open, click the Web button and select "Manage Web Links." A dialog box opens with two tabs: Companies and Favorites. Companies are the company web site addresses that you have entered in the program, either from that tab or in the Data Entry screen. Favorites are the web sites that you have entered (or are pre-entered for you) that provide information on stocks. You will note that the first dozen or so web sites have an asterisk before them -- these are the pre-defined links that cannot be edited. These ship with the program, and are updated when necessary when Toolkit updates are released via the auto-updater.

Below the pre-defined links are the links that you have entered. Click the Add button at the bottom of the window to add a link, Edit to edit the highlighted link, Delete to remove the highlighted link, or Open to load the highlighted link in your browser.

Here's how to Add a "company-specific" link to the program.

First, get the address of the specific page where there is information about a stock. For instance, let's say you want to add a link for Zacks' earnings estimates. Go go the Zacks.com web site, enter a ticker symbol in the search box (let's use Microsoft, MSFT), then arrive at the page with information about the stock you entered. Then, copy the address. It will look something like this:

http://www.zacks.com/research/report.php?type=estimates&t=MSFT

In this address I have highlighted Microsoft's ticker symbol. (Note: some web site addresses do not use the ticker symbol for these kinds of pages, so you won't easily be able to use these kinds of addresses. Uber-geeks can probably figure out how, though!)

Next, return to the Manage Web Links window in Toolkit, and click the Add button.

Type in a Name for the link, such as "Zacks EPS Estimates."

Ignore the Ticker Symbol field (this is used if you were entering a company or investor relations web site on the Companies tab, which in this case would be something like http://www.microsoft.com/msft/default.mspx).

Paste the web site address from Zacks into the URL field, and then (and here's the really important part), replace MSFT in the link with $* (dollar sign-asterisk). It should look something like this:

http://www.zacks.com/research/report.php?type=estimates&t=$*

Click OK.

Now, open a Stock Study, click the Web button, and you will see the Zacks EPS Estimates entry appear in the dropdown list of sites. Select this link, and your browser will open and go straight to the Microsoft page on the Zacks web site.

Here's another site that you can add in the same way: