RE: Yahoo Quotes Import to Metastock, how?

["John Sellers" <ay286@xxxxxxxx>]

After you have the quotes it appears to be clear how to proceed.

Thanks, could you also describe the method that you are using to access
yahoo (URL definition) to receive the quotes. I assume if you wish to
download the data for the S&P 500 stocks you need to put these symbols in
some kind of format for sending to yahoo.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Yarroll
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 3:12 PM
To: metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Yahoo Quotes Import to Metastock, how?


Bodo,

It's actually quite easy to do and you don't need any third-party software
(Excel is enough).

Once you get the quotes from Yahoo in Excel .xls format see that the columns
are arranged as follows:

<TICKER>,<PER>,<DTYYMMDD>,<OPEN>,<HIGH>,<LOW>,<CLOSE>,<VOLUME>

For example:

MSFT,D,20010831,50,55,45,50,100000

where columns are separated by a comma.
If necessary, arrange your columns to fit this pattern (Im not sure, but I
think I saw some data from Yahoo where you had Close before the Open,High
etc.) Also, Yahoo spreadsheets wouldnt have "Ticker","Per" columns (just
insert 2 columns, fill the first row, and copy down). Also possibly, the
date format would have to be changed to fit the pattern.

Next, save the Excel spreadsheet as a .csv format. I'm not sure how's that
in Germany, but some European countries use semicolon {;} rather than a
comma {,} in csv format; if that's your case, change the file extension from
.csv to .doc {WordPad document} , open it up and replace all semicolons with
commas (Edit->Replace). Save the file.

Finally, change the file extension again from .csv {or .doc} into .txt and
you're ready to import it using Downloader as a usual simple text file. Your
file should have the structure shown below, and make sure that you include
the file "headers"  in the first line:

<TICKER>,<PER>,<DTYYMMDD>,<OPEN>,<HIGH>,<LOW>,<CLOSE>,<VOLUME>
MSFT,D,20010831,50,55,45,50,100000
etc.

This sounds complicated but believe me, if you do it once or twice and then
settle to do it every day, the routine takes in. Personally I've hunted down
and converted so many weird data formats into Metastock that I just can't
dream of something else than a complicated data conversion problem ;-))

All the best,
Yarroll