I have historical 1 min tick data for some of the major currency pairs. I am looking for off-line charting software where I can try out some ideas using this historical data.
Does anyone know of any software? Freeware would be nice.
Thanks
Metatrader 4 is your best bet. Get a free demo account from IBFX, Alpari, or any other MT4 broker and they will give you the software for free.
Thank you for your reply. I contacted Alpari live chat and they said that Metatrader 4 cannot be used offline. I am in the process of downloading it. Are you aware of a way to feed it historical data?
Thanks again
It can be used offline, they are talking rubbish, just download it and give it a try
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I think you can use ForexTester offline although I never have. They have a free trial available. d
Yeah, it can be used offline. If it couldn’t there would not be an “Open Offline” buttton. 
Just hit F2 to open up the MT4 History Center and go from there. You might also want to read this tutorial… MetaTrader History Data Importing and Converting Tutorial for Quality Backtesting Forex Blog
Also, unless there’s some reason you want your data and not Alpari’s you can just use their data. It’s a lot easier to get into MT4 since it just requires hitting the “download” button in the history center. Their data goes back to 1999 on all timeframes.
Thank you very much for your reply and the blog you included. I found that very useful. I got to the point where I am suppose to download the data from “Alpari History Center”, However that site said that "downloading historical data was temporarily unavailable"
Any suggestions as to what else I can do?
Another question.
If I find another source of Data, is it necessary to download every time frame i.e 1 min 5 min 1 hour etc etc Or will MetaTrrader for be able to assemble the longer time frames if I just download the 1 minute data?
Thanks again for your help.
I just checked and got the same unavailable message. It’s been a few months since I downloaded any data from there, so I’m not sure how long it’s been down or when it will be back up.
Another solution would be to get an Alpari demo account and hit the download button in the history center. I just tried it and that still works, and it downloads data all the way back to 1999.
You can use the period_converter script in MT4 to build data for different timeframes from 1M data, but it’s a little complicated to use. Just google “MT4 period_converter” and you’ll find some tutorials.
I have a Demo account and I hit the download button and brought down a folder named AUDCAD which contained 25 *.dat files that appear to go back to 2007.
The instruction in the blog says that I am to unzip and rename it. The file I have downloaded is not zipped and I don’t know what to rename. Do i rename each of these *.dat files? I hit the work offline button but it doesn’t show the newly downloaded AUDCAD files so I can’t tell if I donloaded a 1 minute file or some other time frame.
Sorry to be so much trouble.
It’s no trouble at all!
You don’t need to do anything else. The tutorial was for downloading the data and installing it in a non-Alpari MT4. The .dat files you get when you download the data in MT4 are where the data is permanently stored and you don’t have to do anything else. If you open up a AUDCAD chart you should be able to see all the data back to 2007 right now.
I’m guessing it’s only back to 2007 since it’s such a odd pair. The majors all go back to 1999.
Also, make sure you’re selecting the pair and timeframe you want to download. I’m assuming you didn’t do this and got AUDCAD simply because it’s the first one on the list.
Yes I got the AUDCAD because it was first, however it was the only period that was offered. I hope it is 1 minute.
The file went to the download directory but it did not show up when I opened the offline window.Each of the download folders has 1 *.hst file along with all the *.dat files. MetaTrader 4.
I don’t how to get MetaTrader to see the downloads I have made.
Any Suggestions?