Google finance for excel

The GOOGLEFINANCE function is an amazing tool used to make Google Sheets stock formulas for people who need to work with real-time finance data. This single function gives you not only the current prices of stocks and conversion rates of currencies, but also historical data of these securities over days, weeks, months or years.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to use the GoogleFinance function to work with stocks as well as financial currency.

What Does the GOOGLEFINANCE Function do in Google Sheets?

The GOOGLEFINANCE function accepts a ticker symbol representing a particular security and returns the current or historical information relating to that security from Google Finance. You can use this function to fetch data about both stocks as well as currencies.

As such you can apply it to research investment opportunities, keep track of stock portfolio, convert between currencies, analyze and more. You can also use the fetched data to build visualizations, perform subsequent calculations and build dashboards.

A common use of this function is in computing the moving average for assets over a given time period. Similarly, you can use it to visualize trends in stock prices and make forecasts for the future in a Google finance spreadsheet.

Syntax for the GOOGLEFINANCE Function

The syntax to build a GOOGLEFINANCE formula goes as follows:

GOOGLEFINANCE(ticker, [attribute], [start_date], [end_date], [interval])

Here,

• ticker is the ticker symbol corresponding to the security that you want to fetch data for. It consists of initials that represent the security, along with the exchange symbol. For example, “NASDAQ:GOOG” represents Google stocks from the NASDAQ exchange. However, you could also simply use the symbol “GOOG” for this parameter. This is the only required Google finance syntax argument.
• The attribute parameter is a single string that specifies the data that you want to access relating to the given ticker. Some examples of attribute parameter strings include “price”, “high”, “low”, “volume”, etc. This is an optional parameter and its default value is “price”.
• start_date specifies the starting date from which you want your data fetched. This parameter is optional and you can use it when you want to fetch historical data relating to a ticker.
• end_date specifies the ending date up to which you want your data fetched. This parameter is also optional. Instead of a date, you can also specify the number of days from the start_date for which you want your data fetched.
• interval is also an optional parameter, and it is used when fetching historical data. This parameter specifies the intervals between dates fetched in your historical data. The parameter can be either “daily” or “weekly”. If you want the data in intervals of 2 days, 3 days, etc., you could specify a number between 1 and 7 for the interval parameter. Numbers other than these are not allowed.

GOOGLEFINACE Attributes

Google Finance in Google Sheets Standard Attributes

Historical Data Attributes

GOOGLEFINANCE Attributes for Mutual Funds

How to Use the GOOGLEFINANCE Function

Now that we have explained the basic syntax of the GOOGLEFINANCE function, let us see how we can apply the function in different scenarios

Using the GOOGLEFINANCE Function to Work on Current Stocks Data

To use the GOOGLEFINANCE function. You just have to:

1. Click on an empty cell
2. Type =GOOGLEFINACE( into the cell
3. Set the arguments you wish to use in the formula. You must at least include the ticker argument.
4. Use a closing bracket and press enter

For example, let us apply the GOOGLEFINANCE functions to fetch the current price of a stock, say the Google stocks (from the NASDAQ exchange). The formula, in this case, will be:

=GOOGLEFINANCE(“NASDAQ:GOOG”)

Notice that the above formula has only the required parameter. We did not specify any of the optional parameters. This means the attribute parameter will have the default value of “price” and since all other parameters like start_date, end_date and interval are absent, the function understands that we only want the current price of the stock (no historical data).

Here’s the result we get:

Now let’s say you want to see other attributes relating to the stock, like the price, volume, highest and lowest rates for the current day. Then you have to mention the attribute you want in the second parameter, as shown in the screenshot below:

Here’s how we got the results for Price:

1. Enter =GOOGLEFINANCE( into an empty cell E2 in this case
2. Enter the ticker argument which is the cell reference $B$2″:”$B$3 in the example
3. Enter a comma
4. Enter attribute argument which is cell reference D2 in the example

So our total formula looks like this:

=GOOGLEFINANCE($B$2":"$B$3,D2)

Since we used absolute references for the ticker argument ($ symbols to indicate that reference doesn’t change when copying the formula), we can click and drag down the rest of the columns to make Google finance formulas with the fill handle.

Notice the first parameter in the formulae of the above screenshot. Since we are using two different cell references to compose the ticker parameter, we used a concatenation operator (&) to concatenate the reference containing the exchange (B2), followed by a colon (:), followed by the reference containing the security ticker symbol (B3).

In column D of the above screenshot, you can see some of the different attributes that can be used to fetch stock data for the current day used as cell references in the formula. But, you could also use the operator in the formula instead.

Using the GOOGLEFINANCE Sheets Function to Work on Historical Stocks Data

If you want historical data relating to a stock, you will need to mention the third and fourth parameters in the GOOGLEFINANCE function. Say you want the closing prices of 10 days starting from February 27, 2021. Your formula would then be:

=GOOGLEFINANCE(“NASDAQ:GOOG”,”close”,DATE(2021,2,27),10)

In the above formula, we specified the third parameter as the starting date, DATE(2021,2,27) and the fourth parameter as a number. So the GOOGLEFINANCE function knows that this is the number of days. If we specified a date value, GOOGLEFINANCE would take this as an ending date value rather than the number of days from the starting date.

When you press the return key, your result would look something like this:

Let’s use a more general-purpose version of the formula, so that you can customize it to your requirements:

Notice that we specified the attribute parameter as “all”, so the GOOGLEFINANCE function shows all 5 historical data attributes:

• Open
• High
• Low
• Close
• Volume

Moreover, since we specified the interval parameter as “daily”, the function returned daily data for 10 days starting from the given date (Feb 27, 2021), which makes 10 rows of data.

If instead of daily, you wanted to display the data in weekly intervals, you would get 2 rows of data, as shown below, since there are just 2 financial weeks in 10 days:

Using the GOOGLEFINANCE Function to Work with Currencies

The GOOGLEFINANCE function also lets you get current and historical conversion rates between a number of global currencies.

To get the conversion rate between two currencies, you need to specify this in the first parameter of the function as follows:

• The keyword “Currency”
• Followed by a colon (:)
• Followed by the ticker symbol of the currency you want to convert
• Followed by the ticker symbol of your target currency.

For example, the ticker symbol for US Dollars is USD while the ticker symbol for UK Pound is GBP (you can find these ticker symbols by searching on Google or by using a tool like Yahoo Finance).

To convert USD to GBP, your ticker symbol would be “Currency:USDGBP”. Note that the original currency should always come before the target currency.

The formula to get exchange rates to convert USD to GBP would then be:

=GOOGLEFINANCE(“Currency:USDGBP”)

If you want to use a more general-purpose version of the formula, you can customize it to your requirements as follows:

Notice we used two different cell references to compose the ticker parameter. We used a concatenation operator (&) to concatenate the keyword “Currency”, followed by a colon (:), followed by the reference containing the original currency symbol (B2) followed by the reference containing the target currency symbol (B3).

Now you have a formula that can fetch the conversion rate of any currency to any other currency.

If you want to use this formula to convert a value from one currency to another, or to build a simple currency converter, all you need to do is import the exchange rate and then multiply it with the value that you want to convert. An example of a currency converter is shown below:

Here, cell B5 contains the formula:

=B4*GOOGLEFINANCE("Currency:"&B2&B3)

This formula simply multiplies the original amount with the exchange rate of converting the currency in cell B2 to the currency in cell B3 (obtained by the GOOGLEFINANCE function).

You can replace the symbols in cells B2 and B3 with your required currency symbols.

Using the Google Sheets GOOGLEFINANCE Function to Import Historical Currency Exchange Rates

The GOOGLEFINANCE function can also help get historical exchange rates between two currencies over a period of time.  This can give us information on how currencies have behaved in the past.

To get historical data about currency conversion rates, you will need to specify the second, third and fourth parameters too.

For example if you want to see historical exchange rates of converting US to GBP in the last 10 days, your formula would look like this:

=GOOGLEFINANCE(“Currency:USDGBP”,”price”,TODAY()-10,TODAY())

You can also generalize the formula as shown below:

You should now see two new columns returned by the function – dates and closing exchange rate for each day.

You could similarly see the data in weekly intervals, simply by adding the fifth parameter “weekly”:

Note: Currencies don’t have trading windows, so you will not get any data returned attributes open, low, high, and volume.

Google Fincance Functions Not Working?

The GOOGLEFINANCE function might sometimes not work and you might find it return an #N/A error. There is not much that you can do about this, as it is one of the limitations of the function.

In fact, this function is not meant for professional use. It is mainly targeted at casual Google Sheets users who want to simply track their portfolio stocks, do some simple market analysis, or convert between currencies.

In case you need market data for professional use (for example, if you are a financial industry professional or work for a government entity), you might need to purchase additional licensing from a third-party data provider.

Google Sheets Finance Functions FAQ

How Often Does the GOOGLEFINANCE Function Update in Google Sheets?

The GOOGLEFINANCE function updates approximately every 15 minutes.

Is the GOOGLEFINANCE Function Worth It?

It’s free tracking of your stock portfolio. Something that many people pay thousands of dollars a year for. While it may seem intimidating to use at first, once you know it, it’s a powerful tool.

Does GOOGLEFINANCE Have Crypto?

Yes you can pull data from the crypto market into Google Sheets with the GOOGLEFINANCE function. You just have to use the crpto pair name as the ticker argument. For example, for Bitcoin and USD you could use the following formula:

=GOOGLEFINANCE("BTCUSD")

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we showed you some examples of how to fetch current and historical market data using the GOOGLEFINANCE function. You can use the examples we used to build your own automated Google Finance Sheet. We tried to make this tutorial as detailed and clear as we could. We hope you find it useful.

Related Reading:

• How to Auto-Refresh Google Sheets Formulas (Updates Every 1-Minute)
• Free Google Sheets Ledger Template [and How to Use]
• 5 Useful Google Sheets Project Management Templates [Free]
• How to Convert Currency in Google Sheets (Google Finance Function)
• Google Sheets Notifications: How to Turn On, Edit & Remove

Here’s another method of getting stock prices into Excel.  It’s part of a series: introduction and using MSN Money in Excel.

This time we’ll use the improved Query system in recent versions of Excel combined with data from Google Finance.

It’s a sad indictment of Microsoft Office that the best place to get stock data is Google.

Google’s version of Excel is Sheets and that has a nifty function that grabs stock prices right into the worksheet.  Once you get the data into a Google Sheet, it can be automatically exported and grabbed by Excel.

It’s an indirect method but effective.  Google’s GoogleFinance() function returns a lot of information about many global stocks and indexes.    18 different ‘attributes’ for each stock or index – too many to show in a single screen image (they’re listed later in this article).

To make this work, create a new Google Sheets from the online service (not the downloadable software).  Go to Google Drive and make a new sheet.

Add to the sheet codes you want to look up, then a column with calls to GoogleFinance() to lookup those codes.  For simplicity we’ll just lookup the price. We’ve added another column with the vital currency detail as well  eg GoogleFinance(A3,’currency’)

Sheets works similarly to Excel for these operations. There’s an autocomplete in the function entry line and you can copy then paste to fill cells too.

Extra:  you can view only the Sheet that Peter Deegan made for these examples at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZPfVybR-8HNlo4qXjP14B5guXQiaFuw9iz3xOGgxdgY/edit?usp=sharing  It’s a READ ONLY worksheet with editing not available, for obvious reasons. The usual 21^st century disclaimers, use at your own risk etc.

Get full details on stock price integration with Excel in Real-Time Excel – get live stock prices, currency rates and more – less than US$12 or even a measly US$7 for Office-Watch.com subscribers (which is free).

Each column has a standard heading with the GoogleFinance() attribute in the 2^nd row.

Once you have a simple sheet to start with, the next step is to publish it in a form that Excel can understand.  Go to File | Publish to the Web

Choose the worksheet/tab you want to publish and select ‘Comma-separated values (.csv)’.

Make sure the ‘Automatically republish when changes are made’ option is on.

Copy the supplied link so you can use it in Excel.  The link will download a .csv file with the data from the worksheet cells.

Switch to Excel (in this case Excel 2016 for Windows).  Go to Data | New Query | From File | From CSV.

You’ll be presented with a standard File Open dialog but you don’t have to select a saved .csv file.  Paste in the link from Google Sheets then click Open.

After a pause, Excel will show you what it’s downloaded and how it suggests dealing with the data. It should do an accurate job dealing with the incoming data.

Click Load and Excel will make a new worksheet for you.

Currency formatting

In the above example, you’ll see that the Sheets column was formatted with the correct symbols for each currency (Sterling and Euro).

Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate correctly.  See the Sheets column on left and the Excel version on the right.

The solution is to change Sheets to Number format, with no currency symbols.  Do any currency formatting in Excel.

Query Editor

The setup isn’t finished, right click on the query and choose Edit to fix a few things.

Make the first row of data into the column headings.

Change the sort order to put Symbols in alphabetical order.  This makes them available for VLOOKUP() searches and a very welcome (ie overdue) inclusion in Excel.

Finally, go to Query | Properties and rename the query to something more helpful than the link text.

Click Close and Load to leave the Query Editor.

Now you have a ‘live’ data worksheet that you can use to lookup prices etc to insert into your own calculations.

Finding Stock Codes

Here’s how to find stock or index codes to use with the GoogleFinance() function.

Search Google Finance for companies across many different markets.  The code will be in brackets after the company name.

For US companies, the market prefix (eg NYSE or NASDAQ) isn’t necessary.  NYSE:WMT and WMT both work as do NASDAQ:MSFT and MSFT.  But you might like to add it anyway, to distinguish the same company being listed on multiple exchanges.

International exchanges are also well represented.  The exchange prefix is required.

London:

Frankfurt:

Hong Kong: number codes are used.

GoogleFinance()

If you just want the latest price, simply add the stock code eg  GoogleFinance(“MSFT”) or GoogleFinance() function supports the following attributes to use with stock quotes.  Use these in the second parameter of the function eg GoogleFinance(“MSFT”,”priceopen”):

• “price” – Realtime price quote, delayed by up to 20 minutes.
• “priceopen” – The price as of market open.
• “high” – The current day’s high price.
• “low” – The current day’s low price.
• “volume” – The current day’s trading volume.
• “marketcap” – The market capitalization of the stock.
• “tradetime” – The time of the last trade.
• “datadelay” – How far delayed the realtime data is.
• “volumeavg” – The average daily trading volume.
• “pe” – The price/earnings ratio.
• “eps” – The earnings per share.
• “high52” – The 52-week high price.
• “low52” – The 52-week low price.
• “change” – The price change since the previous trading day’s close.
• “beta” – The beta value.
• “changepct” – The percentage change in price since the previous trading day’s close.
• “closeyest” – The previous day’s closing price.
• “shares” – The number of outstanding shares.
• “currency” – The currency in which the security is priced.

Google Finance should have a ‘Long Name’ attribute so you can confirm that the stock code is returning the data you intend.  That’s especially true for codes such as the Hong Kong bourse which are numbers, not letters.

The function also supports Mutual Funds and historical data check out the GoogleFinance() help page for full info.