Excel Quotes Add-In: Stock quotes from Gaier Software

[GrowthSeeker]

I was trying to get active stock quotes into Excel (Excel 2010, Windows 7) and I read many links here on BH. I found out that a Yahoo API was discontinued in 2017.

I found this thread: Excel Macro using Yahoo Finance- not working
viewtopic.php?p=3604618#p3604618
There I learned that there was a solution with Google sheets, but many said some of the data was delayed and you have to publish a google sheet to the web, if I understood correctly.
There were links to the SMF Add-in which uses yahoo data, the data was said to be better and not delayed, but I couldn't get it to work.
I already knew how to go to yahoo, download a csv file, cut and paste, but I didn't want to do it that way.

Then I found this Excel Quotes Add-In:
http://gaiersoftware.com/Excel/
This is an Excel Add-In developed by (former Microsoft) software developer Dan Gaier. This uses Microsoft's own quote web services to retrieve quotes. The webpage explains how to browse for and enable the Add-In, and has an example Excel file. This was initially released 01/31/2018. I found it to be fairly intuitive. The example file worked immediately, and I was able to add another stock symbol within minutes. This took minutes rather than seconds due to a minor headache.

The minor headache is the need to use a multi-character identifier of the "Financial Instrument", rather than simply the ticker symbol, because this is how MSN Money identifies securities due to retrieving quotes from all over the world. For example instead of "GOOG" you have to use "126.1.GOOG.NAS". But this is made much easier because the Add-In also adds a tab to the ribbon at the top of the Excel screen: File | Home | Insert | etc.. called "Quotes".
Clicking this "Quotes" tab brings up a search pane where you can enter a ticker and get the longer ID code which can be either pasted as is into the active cell, or you can paste the "Last" price, or volume or one of a few dozen data elements. Pretty intuitive as long as you recognize this will paste into whatever cell on the spreadsheet your cursor is in.

I don't know how delayed this data is relative to Yahoo or Google sheets, and I don't know what other limitations there might be.

So, for example if you put "126.1.AMZN.NAS" without the quotes into cell B6
then put =QUOTE($B6, "Symbol") into B7
and put =QUOTE($B6, "Last") into B8
then you get
126.1.AMZN.NAS AMZN 2002.38

To activate the Add-In, in Excel click:
FIle | Options | Add-Ins | Go (the "Go" acts like browse") then surf your hard drive to where you downloaded the Add-In file. Click the file. OK. OK. (may be different in different versions of Excel).
That's it. If it worked, you'll see a new "Quotes" tab at the top of your Excel screen.

Sorry if this post reads like a sales pitch; it isn't meant to be. But I was just happy to find something simple that seems to work very well for getting a few stock quotes into an Excel spreadsheet.

[husky1055]

As of July 1, 2019 Gaier Excel is no longer working. This is why:

ERROR: Failed to retrieve financial data. Internal message: The operation has timed out

I can no longer retrieve any quote.

Please let me know if my win10 version 1903 system had anything to do with this.

[snackdog]

I use Stock Connector, a free Excel add-in. Has worked fine for several years with only occasional hiccups.

[Kataco]

Looks like the Excel add-in from Gaier software has been updated! I've been using this add-in for years and it works very well.

[serbeer]

SMF Excel pluging
http://ogres-crypt.com/SMF/
served me well for many years now, I think one of the links OP posted was about it when it was having a problem that was resolved.

[Jeff Albertson]

Agree, the SMF add-in works well.
https://smf-add-in.blogspot.com/

[Nummerkins]

FYI, this is now built into the latest version of Excel with no add-on needed: https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... 3cf07fbc54

[LinusP]

Is anyone else having trouble with the Excel Quotes Add-In? I've refreshed many times, but can't seem to get any new data since last Tuesday's close (July 30th).

[serbeer]

Is anyone else having trouble with the Excel Quotes Add-In? I've refreshed many times, but can't seem to get any new data since last Tuesday's close (July 30th).

I just checked and have no issues with refreshing my quotes using SMF plugin in Excel 2016. I really only pull Share Price and Name using Ticker from Yahoo, so if you are doing something else, my answer may not be useful. But these 2 things work perfectly fine, I refreshed several times and SMF was getting price changes from Yahoo.

[e5116]

Agree, the SMF add-in works well.
https://smf-add-in.blogspot.com/

I use this too (and have for several years), but there have been several updates to the API's that have caused certain things to break and you have to look up the new codes. Not that hard though, but I can't always get all the attributes I want. Typically, I look for net expense ratio, yield, and performance for trailing returns. In the latest version, I think some of that is missing for MFs or ETFs (I forget which one).