Excel 97: Import Stock Quotes

[Marc]

How do you import stock quotes from the internet into an Excel 97 spreadsheet? It appears there are fairly easy ways to do this in later versions of Excel, but I am having a hard time finding out how to do this in Excel 97.

[glc]

Copied from the Excel 97 help file:

Get data from a Web source

You can get data from an intranet site or from HTTP, FTP, or Gopher sites on the World Wide Web. To get data from a site on the World Wide Web, you must have access through either your intranet or a modem on your computer or network, and you must have an Internet account through an Internet service provider.

1 On the Data menu, point to Get External Data, and then click Run Web Query.
2 Select the Web query you want to run.

A Web query has an .iqy file name extension.

3 Click Get Data.

The Returning External Data to Microsoft Excel dialog box is displayed.

4 Click Properties to specify whether you want to return only the data from tables in the HTML data source or all of the information on the Web page. For more information, click .
5 To return the external data range to the selected worksheet, click Existing worksheet. On your worksheet, click the cell where you want to place the upper-left corner of the external data range, and then click OK.

To return the external data range to a new worksheet, click New worksheet, and then click OK. Microsoft Excel adds a new worksheet to your workbook and automatically starts the external data range in the upper-left corner of the new worksheet.

6 If prompted, enter parameters for the query. If you do not know what the valid parameters are, you may have to ask the person who created the query.

Microsoft Excel runs the query. You can tell the query is running because Microsoft Excel displays the spinning icon on the status bar.

Notes

· Microsoft Excel includes sample Web queries. You can find these samples in the Queries folder where you installed Microsoft Office.
· You can check the status of a query that's running in the background and taking a long time to return data. While the query is running, click Refresh Status on the External Data toolbar. To cancel the query, click Stop Refresh.

[Marc]

GLC
I tried what you suggested.
I selected the web query "Detailed stock quote by PC quote, inc.". I then hit "get data". I got the following error message:

"Unable to open http://webservices.pcquote.com/cgi-b....exe?TICKER=ge. Cannot locate the internet server or proxy server."

I selected other web queries and got similar results.

Are the example web queries that came with Excell 97 no longer usable? Is there some setting in Windows Explorer that I need to adjust to allow this feature to work? Is there some web site with additional web queries that people can download?

[glc]

I honestly have no idea - I'm almost totally dumb in this area. I thought I could be helpful by pasting what I found - there are probably very few users of Office 97 left around here, and I happen to be one of them. I have never tried doing a query of any kind with Excel.

Have you tried asking PC Quote? I tried to access http://webservices.pcquote.com with my browser and it's no good.

[pam123]

2 things are going on.
Every stock site on the web is swamped ( and they have been for the last 4 days ) and, if I remember correctly, PCQuote now requires you to register to use it.
Even then I'm not sure you could use it with Office 97 and this may apply to the other stock sites he's tried to link to as well.

[glc]

www.pcquote.com loads right up though.

[pam123]

When I had a friend who uses that service try to go to the stock ticker he got the : Servers are taking too long to respond, network connection timed out... screen .

The page to use, if you registered or want to register with them, is this one : http://www.pcquote.com/my/login.php

Marc can sign himself up for the free options and/or the free trials and there is an "import to spreadsheet" function for stock quotes, etc. ( but that doesn't mean it's going to work with Office 97.).

[Marc]

Thanks everyone for your help. I found a way to get it done. I went on a different computer with a newer version of Excel. I took an example web query, "MSN MoneyCentral Investor Stock Quotes", and copied its .IQY file to my computer. I then accessed this newer web query within Excel 97 and it works !

[pam123]

Originally Posted by Marc Thanks everyone for your help. I found a way to get it done. I went on a different computer with a newer version of Excel. I took an example web query, "MSN MoneyCentral Investor Stock Quotes", and copied its .IQY file to my computer. I then accessed this newer web query within Excel 97 and it works !

Nice !