Regardless of which software program you use to analyze your data, you need to store the data in a file. The software program then reads the data and analyzes it. While there are many formats in which to store your data, the best choice is a .csv file. CSV stands for comma separated variables.
A data set consists of variables collected into columns that form a matrix. Each column contains data on a single variable; each row pertains to a single entity (for cross-section data) or a single time period (for time-series data). The ID variables should appear in the first columns. The top row of the data set should contain the variable names. The variable names should be short and informative.
Watch this VIDEO (9 min) for demonstration of accessing economic data from the FRED web site, and downloading it into a readable .csv file