Real-Time Excel - get live stock prices, currency rates and more

Put the latest stock prices, global stock indexes, currency exchange rates, Bitcoin even weather details and clocks automatically into Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Real Time Excel boosts your spreadsheets in whole new ways.

Investment help fast 

If you hold stocks, ETFs, funds, or any other investments, you already know the frustration: prices are scattered across websites, your portfolio spreadsheet is always a step behind, and updating it manually wastes time you could spend actually thinking about your money.

Real-Time Excel solves that. The book not only shows exactly how to pull live and historical stock prices, fund values, indexes and currency rates directly into Excel, automatically, using tools you already have.  Working Excel workbooks are included to get you started. Open one up and your personal portfolio tracker is already half built.

For less than the cost of a single trade commission, you can build an investment tracker that updates itself every time you open it. Real-Time Excel walks you through the whole thing step by step:

• Pull live prices for individual stocks, ETFs and mutual funds from exchanges in the USA, UK, Europe, Asia and beyond
• Get historical price data using Excel's STOCKHISTORY() function, so you can chart performance over time or back-test a simple strategy
• Track stock indexes including the S&P 500, NASDAQ, Dow Jones, FTSE 100 and others
• Monitor bonds and fund values alongside your equities
• Follow Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using the same Excel techniques
• Convert everything to your home currency with live exchange rates built into Excel 365
• Using AI (Copilot, ChatGPT etc) to get even more investment data and analysis.

Most personal finance tools give you a walled garden: you see your data their way, on their screen, in their format. Excel gives you full control. Once your prices are flowing in automatically, you can build exactly the portfolio view you want: color-coded gains and losses, automatic rebalancing alerts using conditional formatting, charts that update the moment you open the file, or a summary sheet that rolls up across multiple accounts.

Real-Time Excel doesn't just explain the mechanics. It tells you the practical things that finance sites gloss over, such as which data sources are free, how delayed "real-time" prices actually are (usually 15 to 20 minutes for free feeds), and how to work around that. You'll also learn how to store historical prices so your records don't disappear if a data source changes.

Currency rates for international investors and travelers

If you hold overseas stocks, receive income in a foreign currency, or just want to know what your portfolio is worth in your home currency, Real-Time Excel covers two approaches. Excel 365 on Windows and Mac has direct built-in currency support. For other Excel versions (2024, 2021, 2019, 2016) the book covers alternative methods that still work reliably.

The sample workbooks include a ready-built currency conversion table. Adjust the bank rates Microsoft provides to the real-world rates you actually get from your broker, credit card or ATM.

What you actually get

• Over 355 pages of practical, step-by-step instruction in the 6th edition.
• 28 sample workbooks and documents, ready to open and use immediately
• Coverage for Excel 365 (Windows and Mac) plus Excel 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016
• Full color PDF, works on Windows, Mac, iPad and Android tablets
• Fast-find table of contents with clickable links

• Stock prices and indexes from exchanges around the globe
• Latest 'real-time' and past stock price data.
• Funds and Bonds
• Global Currency Exchange Rates
  

Clocks, Places and Weather

Real Time Excel also explains and has examples for other types of information.

• Geographical information and statistics.
• Weather - the latest weather or forecasts from across the world.
• Clocks - real time for PowerPoint and Excel

Getting those details into Excel, Word and PowerPoint is possible and now easier than before.

Add a real time CLOCK to Excel or PowerPoint with your choice of the look for time, day, date and more. 

New in the 2026 edition - countdown timers in PowerPoint. Something to show before a presentation or meeting begins. 

Excel power

In recent years, Microsoft has made great improvements to Office around data importing.  A lot of this has been obscured by changed branding ('Power Query' is now 'Get and Transform') and the marketing geek speak that the company loves so much. Real-Time Excel blows past all the marketing nonsense, acronyms and tech speak to show how new features can work for individuals and small businesses. We'll show how to use the most common data exchange formats used by public web sites:

• XML
• JSON
• CSV (comma delimited)
• Web pages ('scraping')
• Live updates in Google Sheets and link it into Excel automatically.

You can use the same techniques to grab information from other sources and sites. Uniquely, we'll also give you the sample documents used to make this book.  Open them up in Office and tweak to suit your needs.

Beyond the basics

Real-Time Excel is a practical book using real data feeds that you can use today - most of them are free. There are tips on the practicalities of getting live data streams like viewing the 'raw' data, getting API keys, security options and Internet privacy.

Word and PowerPoint too

We'll show how to drop fresh information into Word documents or PowerPoint slides. Yes, there are example Word and PowerPoint documents included so you can see for yourself how it's done. Some of the tricks we'll show you aren't the usual method that Microsoft demonstrates.  We tell you what works best.

Real Time Excel

• Data Explorer begat PowerQuery begat Get & Transform
• PowerQuery or Get & Transform?
• What is a data feed?
• Formats
• Web pages
• Refreshing
• Security
• Secure it
• Testing a data feed
• About the example files

Linked Data Types

• Getting Started
• Data Card
• Refresh and auto refresh
• Time field conversion
• Metric conversion
• Cross-platform support including workarounds for limitations in the Excel Mobile apps.
• Currency symbol formatting for different currencies
• Exchange rates / stock price conversion
• Making web links
• Reporting Bad Data
• Under the Hood
• The Future

Copilot and AI

• Copying from Copilot
• Importing tables from Copilot
• Stocks and Financial prompts
• Weather prompts
• Date & Time prompts

Stock Prices and more

• Finding a source
• Disclaimers
• Stock Data Type
• Google Finance

Stock Indexes

• Index Fields
• Adding a Stock Index
• Finding a 'missing' stock index.

Historical Stock Data

• Preview of StockHistory() in Excel 365
• Data from a folder
• Adding more information
• Data Sources

Currency Exchange Rates

• Excel 365 direct support
• Sources
• Get External Data
• Power Query
• Lookup a rate
• Using in your spreadsheets
• VLOOKUP()
• Get a single value

Bitcoin and beyond

• Excel 365 direct support
• CoinDesk
• Other Crypto Currency feeds

Clocks

• Excel clocks
• Clock with stock/currency

PowerPoint Clocks and Countdown

• Clocks - Clock only., Big or with Picture
• Countdown Timer.

Geography

• Field Lists
• Latitude and Longitude - calculation tricks.
• Data problems 

Weather

• Power Query limitation
• Setup Weather link
• Adding Query
• Formatting and conversion

Word: Adding live data

• Link single cells
• Updating
• Under the hood
• About the example files

PowerPoint: Adding Live data

• Excel data source
• PowerPoint
• Change Excel Formatting
• One with the lot
• Updating

Make your own data feed

• Web Tables
• XML from Excel

Import functions

• ImportText()
• ImportCSV()
• Problems with the new Import.... functions
• Why PowerQuery is better.