Frequently asked questions
Why is MIX free? Will it remain free?
We intended it to be free, because we believe there should be software for beginning researchers and researchers in developing countries to learn about and perform meta-analysis at low cost. The project development has been supported by grants from the Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Kitasato University and the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. We are now looking for sponsors to make sure the software can be maintained and further developed in the future. We are confident the program, or at least a basic version of it, will remain freely available.
Can the program be used instead of existing programs like RevMan, MetaWin, WINMA, Comprehensive Meta-Analysis?
Yes and no. Yes, MIX can do many of the analyses that you find in other meta-analysis software( and even more). However, MIX focuses on numerical data and explaining what happens with these data in numerical and graphical meta-analyses; it does not manage reviews like RevMan and will not do so in future versions either.
The program freezes when I try to start it up. How can I fix this?
This is not caused by MIX, but by a bug in non-updated versions of Excel 2003. Please update your Office (and Excel) by going to the Microsoft Office Web site and clicking on Office Update in the upper right corner. This is free.
The program starts fine, but when I try to load a data set I get an error saying MIX cannot find the item. What's going on?
Again, this is not caused by MIX, but by a bug in certain non-updated versions of Excel. Please update your Office (and Excel) by going to the Microsoft Office Web site and clicking on Office Update in the upper right corner. This is free.
Questions that are not answered above
If you have questions that are not included in the FAQ above, do not hessitate to If your question concerns program errors, please provide us with information on your operating system (Windows XP, Vista, etc), your version of Excel (2000 Professional Edition, XP Home Edition, 2003 Professional Edition, etc), and the update serial of your Excel (found in Help / About inside Excel, for instance Microsoft Excel 2003 (11.8211.8202.) SP3).