Excel Quotes Add-In

4/10/2023: Microsoft’s quote services have been broken since 4/6. In MSMoneyQuotes, you will see an error that looks like the following "Failed to update quotes." And in the Excel Add-In, you will get "n/a" for quote values. In both cases, it's because Microsoft's quote servers are returning this error: "The remote server returned an error: (504) Gateway Timeout". Please be aware that MSMoneyQuotes and the Excel Add-In are completely dependent upon Microsoft’s quote service working. When Microsoft’s quote services are down, there’s nothing I can do about it as I’m not a Microsoft employee. I have escalated the problem to Microsoft and they have an incident ticket tracking the problem for their own apps. Once they fix for their own apps, then MSMoneyQuotes and the Excel Add-In should start working again. Sorry I’m unable to personally respond to the hundreds of emails I’ve received.

8/5/2022: The Excel Quotes Add-In has been broken recently due to changes in Microsoft's quote serivce. The quote service now requires a higher version of SSL/TLS in order to communicate with it. A new version of the Add-In has been created to fix this issue. Please download version 1.3.

4/19/2021: The Excel Quotes Add-In has been broken recently due to changes in Microsoft Excel. It seems the Excel Quotes Add-In has disappeared for some users. Many people have been able to successfully address this issue by adding the XLL file to a "Trusted Location" in "Trust Center". See this post for more information.

A long time ago, my team at Microsoft built an Excel plug-in to get stock quotes from MSN Money. It looked something like this: MSNStockQuote("MSFT","Last").

Unfortunately Microsoft hasn't supported this plug-in for years :(

While building MSMoneyQuotes, I reconginzed Excel was still lacking a decent Add-In to get quotes. So I built one!

The Excel Add-In I developed uses Microsoft's own quote web services to retrieve quotes. Therefore it supports getting quotes for any securities that work on the MSN Money website and/or the Windows 10 Money app. I also added the ability to get cryptocurrency quotes using the CryptoCompare API.

I have made it freely available from my website. However, I do accept donations which help offset the many hours put towards building, improving and supporting this software.


Prerequisites


Download and Install


Example Excel File

After you've downloaded and installed the Add-In, please see my sample Excel file to see how this works!
QuotesAddInExample.xlsx


Basic Usage

The Excel Quote Add-In works by providing a new Excel function (aka formula) called =QUOTE(). It can be used to retrieve quote data like last, open, day high/low, year high/low, etc.
The function accepts two parameters: 

=QUOTE("Financial Instrument", "Quote Field")

Example Usage: 
=QUOTE("126.1.GOOG.NAS", "Last")
=QUOTE("126.1.GOOG.NAS", "Currency")
=QUOTE("126.1.GOOG.NAS", "Change")
=QUOTE("126.1.GOOG.NAS", "Date")

-- Or get the financial instrument from the A1 cell (or whatever cell)
=QUOTE(A1, "Last")
=QUOTE(A1, "Currency")
=QUOTE(A1, "Change")
=QUOTE(A1, "Date")


How to determine the appropriate "Financial Instrument" symbol

I've build it a basic search pane that makes finding a MSN Money supported financial instrument easy. Go to the custom "Quotes" tab and click the "Search" button.

The "Quotes" tab has a "Search", "Update Now" and "Start Auto Update" buttons:

In the search pane, you can search by symbol or company name and hopefully find what you're looking for. Just start typing in the search field and the listbox will automatically load relevant results. This uses the same search service used by the MSN Money website, so I can't control the search behavior and/or results.

Once you find what you're looking for, you have the option to:

  1. Select the Quote Field you'd like to get a value for and click "Insert Forumla" to insert the applicable =QUOTE() forumla
  2. Select "Financial Instrument" to insert the raw financial instrument into the currently active call. This does not insert a formula. This may be useful if you're using the second approach [e.g. =QUOTE(A1, "Last")] where you're referencing another cell to get the financial instrument.


Cryptocurrency Support

Cryptocurrencies are a hot topic recently, so I also added support for those. I leverage the CryptoCompare API to get quotes.
If you know the cryptocurrnecy pair, you can simply type the formula directly into the cell. For example: 

=QUOTE("BTC/USD", "Last")
=QUOTE("BTC/USD", "Market Cap")
=QUOTE("ETH/JPY", "Change")
=QUOTE("XRP/CAD", "Date")
=QUOTE("BTC/ETH", "Day High")
Or you can use the "Cryptocurrency" tab in the search pane. Same as the other tab, start typing in the search field and relevant results will show up.


Supported Quote Fields

Here's a list of Quote Fields and which security types they're generally applicable to. Not all fields work for every security.

Quote Field Indexes Stocks ETFs Funds Currency Rates Cryptocurrencies
Symbol X X X X X X
Name X X X X
Currency X X X X
Last X X X X X X
Change X X X X X X
Date X X X X X
Type X X
Exchange X X X
Previous Close X X X
Day High X X X X
Day Low X X X X
Open X X X X
PE X
EPS X
Volume X X X X
Avg Volume X X X
Year High X X X X
Year High X X X X
Market Cap X X
Ask X X X
Beta X
Bid X X X
Dividend Yield X X
Industry X


How to update quotes

Once the cell(s) are setup with the proper =QUOTE() forumla, you can go to the custom "Quotes" tab and click the "Update Now" button. This button forces a "re-calculation" of all =QUOTE() forumulas, which invokes my add-in to retrieve quotes from the relevant web service APIs.


To automatically update quotes every 1 minute, click the "Start Auto Update"" button. Essentially this starts a timer to automatically run the "Update Now" logic every minute.


Click "Stop Auto Update" to stop the auto update timer.


Note: Quotes are cached for 30 seconds, so the if you try to click the "Update Now" button more often than that nothing will happen.


Help and Support

I've made this free to avoid creating a sense of obligation that I'll provide support. I don't guarentee it will work in every scenario or that I'll provide support when it doesn't work. With that said, if you do have a problem that you think I can help with shoot me an email and I'll reply if I can.

Please recognized I am no longer a Microsoft employee and cannot fix quote issues on MSN Money. Nor can I address outages that the MSN Money quote web service may have. My Excel Quote Add-In is not responsible for the actual quote values returned by MSN Money, so please don't email asking me to fix such issues. Same with the cryptocurrency quotes from the CryptoCompare API.

I can be reached at my support email address: support@gaiersoftware.com


Release History


  1. Version 1.0 - 01/31/2018 - Initial Release
  2. Version 1.1 - 02/22/2018 - Added Auto Quotes Update
  3. Version 1.2 - 06/30/2019 - Updated to consume the new Microsoft Quote Services
  4. Version 1.3 - 08/05/2022 - Updated to communicate with the Microsoft Quote Services using TLS 1.1 and higher. Fixed loading cryptocurrency coin list.