Excel Tip #5 : How to Pull Stock Quotes into Excel 2010 from MSN Money

Do you need to import stocks from a MSN Money to Microsoft Excel 2010?

From my past experiences with excel, I knew there was a way to import stock quotes from a Yahoo Finance or a MSN Money. But, when I googled “stock quotes into Excel”, a bunch of junk popped up. I wasn’t sure which was the correct way to do it.

MSN Money is directly linked to Excel No plug-in is required!

Microsoft Excel had been changed from previous versions. Prior to the Excel 2010 version, pulling stock quotes into excel required a plug-in. They removed this plug-in for Excel 2010 and later versions and actually just incorporated it in the software itself.

What I really wanted to do was to compare my stock portfolio that I tracked within excel with the most updated prices, without having to go look up each and every stock quote’s price. 
Getting stock quotes into Excel 2010 is relatively easy. 

Without further adieu here are the easy steps to importing stock quotes into Excel 2010.

1)  Go to ‘Data’ tab –> click on ‘Connections’ –> ‘Add’

2)  Select ‘MSN MoneyCentral Investor Stock Quotes’ and double-click or select open

3)  Click on the newly added ‘MSN MoneyCentral Investor Stock Quotes’ connection and hit ‘Properties’

4)  Make sure the ‘Enable background refresh’ is checked and any other setting you’d like have working for you

5) Go back to the ‘Data’ tab –> click on ‘Existing Connections’ and select the connection you added –> click open

6) A ‘Import Data’ box will appear and this is where you want to select where you want the data to appear.

7) Click ‘OK’. You will then be prompted with a ‘Enter Parameter Value’. Add the stock quotes separated by commas. (GOOG,AXP,KO,COP,DTV)
Note: Make sure you check ‘Use this value/reference for future refreshes’.

8) To refresh you data click the cell in which the data is located then go to tab ‘Data’ –> ‘Refresh All’ –> ‘Refresh’

Here is the final product.

And that is how you import Stock Quotes provided by MSN Money!