How to integrate and connect MT4 and Excel

First off, those “bucketshop banners” pay the bills around here. We wouldn’t have this free forum or the Babypips School without them, so they are providing a service to all the traders here.

Second, you [B]can [/B]do things with that CSV file. I use it all the time. You just save it and open it in excel.

I understand that the banners help maintain the site and provide content to the forum visitors. However on what merits are they allowed to advertise? On who can afford it or on the usefullness of the product they advertise? I would like to think its the second. I have been a frequent reader of this forum and I have noticed that the admins here do their best to provide quality information.

Regarding the CSV file. Yes, you can use the file to achive few things but I will compare that to trying to build a car engine by accessing the hood and importing the parts through the exaust :slight_smile:

Well for newbies like me I think it would greatly help if we can use a platform initially that is easier and less complicated like excel. While I’m sure that advanced users have no problem building their strategies from meta trader, it is not as easy for people new in this business and having excel as a tool would be a great advantage for us in starting out in forex trading.

i agree with tradingnb, excel is a basic tool therefore it can be used and newbies like myself can understand it better.

i’ve no programming background, and it helps that excel can be used as a platform in meta trader…

thanks for all the comments…will now explore excel in meta trader… :0

I really appreciate the information you all posted in here, I don’t know why I didn’t see this before, there are very good tips for being a good trader like using excel in meta trader…thanks!

meta trader is difficult on its own, good thing there’s always excel…:slight_smile:

meta trader is difficult on its own, good thing there’s excel that can be used is meta trader…

no need to complicate meta trader when using excel instead of MQL4…another programming language will just make meta trader more difficult…

thanks for all the great tips…we can do everything in Microsoft excel.We can use it as a platform of forex trading.

I never was in a class with a teacher teaching computer, I learned what I needed over time and excel never featured - I can’t do nothing with it. But if I can fix a fried power supply or unlock my huawei then I’m not that daft after all - complex instructions will do just fine.

Lets try this. I have a project to get my own precision charts for DJIA Elliot wave study for the other thread. I downloaded the excel index close data for YR1, MN1 & D1 they have at various sites, and I want to get a linegraph for each, with all the dates well aligned with the curve. As easy as it seems, its holding up everything and those tutorial downloads aren’t much help after some point. While at it, I’d like a chart for YR1 closes, and MN1 closes separately, plotted on a semilogarithmic scale for y axis.

Also on the list, would someone explain how to get the account history data into an excel sheet directly; for money management and account monitoring, I require to calculate cummulative account balance and opens, percentages for each singe trade and give each a naming/reference code for posterity (to explain later where all the money went/came from), and currently I have to feed the data manually every weekend to an excel sheet with these additional columns. Could it be done in a few clicks?

Also, for correlation trading there is the close delta relationship for E$ and $Franc which I used to follow on paper now I do it on excel as shown on thread, how to get hourly prices fed to the excel from mt4 in one or two clicks, which cant happen manually on a weekday in realtime or thereabout when its most needed?

That would be excelent. Thanx yo’all in advance.

Regardless of the fact the CSV can not be very useful, a quick knowledge about excel with an easy way to work with MetaTrader can be a really good break for Newbies like me. In my case, I don’t know anything about Metatrader’s MQL, however have some few well not as expert knowledge with excel, with some help from 3rd party software, I can save time from learning from learning Metatraders programing to create my strategy but rather focus on learning Excel and linking it to Metatrader to execute my trades. Thanks for you’re feedback because it has made me think of this justification.

Why not put them in a database like MySQL, you can do just about anything then including easily exporting to excel, I can show you how to do that if you know how to set up MYSQL Database.

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.

Harsh but True.

Hello!

I am trying to use Excel with mt4 dde to do some calculations on position sizing. The problem is that each time I reference the cell containing the live quote in a formula I get the #VALUE! error message. I tried different sample spreadsheets shared on forums but the problem remains.
I run Excel 2003 and under Win XP.

I would appreciate any help!

Hi :slight_smile:

I want to transfer bollingerband data into excel. I would like to get lowerband data, middleband data and upperband data and display it in excel. the timeframe is 15m,1h,4h and daily.anyone have idea how to do it? :confused:

I can’t see how you make this connection useful, if you must use Excel for a purpose, I would still update to a database first, then you can easily import/export to excel, I would recommend using MySQL since you can use the dll libraries, the you can just do an SQL Insert on every tick.

Jus before I start on it again or on your SQL will it work for exporting an import INTO mt4? Guess it will sort the accounting issue, getting to it ASAP. Appreciating all help immensely, here and elsewhere.