Attempting to trade with Excel really is a disaster waiting to happen.
If you cant code in MQL4, which is afterall a platform specifically designed to simplify the creation of trading systems for users with limited experience, then how can you possibly expect to use a tool thats NOT designed for this purpose ?
The general idea of software development is to use tools to make life easier. Forcing a simple solution that at most requires a couple of hundred lines of simple MQL code, supported by libraries, and procedures specifically designed for the purpose of placing and managing trades, into another product that was not designed to handle the task is plain crazy.
Face facts, if you cant program in MQL, then you cant program in VBA. If you attempt to code complex algorithms into a bunch of excel formule’s, then semantically the solution makes no sense, it’ll be completely unmaintainable, impossible to test, debug or modify.
If you are incapable of debugging and testing simple MQL, then believe me, you’ll find the task 100 times harder in excel.
Charting will be inferior, speed and performance will be inferior, and the very worst aspect is that if your attempting to use DDE then the whole solution is based on a technology that hasnt actually been formally supported by Microsoft for almost a decade and didnt work particularly well in the first instance !
I’ve been using Excel since its exception, and I honestly cannot recall finding a single spreadsheet created by a user without software development experience, that did not contain serious errors. There’s a body of serious research evidence from credible sources that will confirm that to be the case.
Trading is difficult enough without additionally complicating matters. You need to use the right tool for the job, and believe me, its not definately NOT Excel.