Quicken Stock Data Download Work Around

Netstock:

While a great, little program on its own, the only file exporting is text based, comma delimited, which I don't think Quicken can use.

Notan

Or am I wrong? Is a QIF file, text based and comma delimited?

Notan

Actually, I think that is exactly what Quicken wants for importing security prices. I know nothing about Netstock, but if it can properly format a comma delimited (.csv) file, Quicken will import that file for securities prices (you need to have the Portfolio View open to get the option to import prices).

The format, as per Intuit, is as follows:

"",,""

where is the security's ticker symbol, is the security price, expressed as a whole number and a fractional part, and is the date the security had that price.

For example, for shares of Intuit updated 6/30/98, with a price of $50.00 per share, the price record would be:

"INTU",50,"6/30/98"

I suggest using a four digit year. And, as the example implies, do not expect such things as high, low, volume, etc.

Text based, yes; comma delimited, no.

Though, I should have added, it does not matter if that data is in the file. If high, low, volume info exists in each price record, to the right of the required data, Quicken will ignore it.

If that's the case, then that's exactly what Netstock export:

e.g., "QCOM","34.640","4/11/2005"

I wonder if the quotes, around the price, would be a problem.

Notan

As far as I know, xl2qif will not help. It is designed to output QIF files from Excel for non-investment Quicken accounts.

There is at least one poster in this group who knows how to instruct Excel itself to download prices for securities, hopefully he will offer his services, as I have forgotten the magin incantation(s). Once the price data is in Excel, it should be a fairly trivial matter to output it to a properly formatted comma delimited file for importing to Quicken.

No, I should have mentioned that; the quotes around the price are acceptable.

One other note: I suggest taking care when choosing what folder to put the .csv file in and what to name it. You must key in the entire path/file-name every time you import prices.

Those would have been "magic" incantations, but for my not so magical fingers.

Until I started using q05p, I downloaded prices from Yahoo finance & imported directly into q. Entered the symbols in Yahoo & then when I wanted prices went to bottom of yahoo page -> clicked on download to spread sheet (or words to that effect) & saved to an easy to remember file. Then opened qkn -> to portfolio -> file -> import prices -> type in the entire path for where file was saved -- eg c:\04quotes.csv -- imports all but indices. This still works in q05 but then you lose morningstar info on mutual funds. dj

DJ,

Did you experience any problems when you imported .cvs price files into Quicken? I'm wondering how Quicken handles corrupted data or data not in the proper format. I read somewhere that Quicken wants an apostrophe between day and year verses forward slashes for all 20XX dates.

Thank you for the information.

D. Thomas

No, there were no problems. It was simply a matter of developing a personal portfolio, entering the symbols I wished to download in Yahoo (a one time effort) & saving to spreadsheet. The import to qkn was seamless -- did not have to open saved data & make changes prior to importing. The only issue is the import price menu in qkn does not have a browse option so the full path must be typed in. I always changed the name of the file prior to downloading & saved to the root directory as it was easiest to remember (typing long paths is not something I wish to do). After importing qkn gives a message of how many prices were imported. dj

If someone knows how to write a macro for Word (or similar word processor) and setup a desktop icon that will open word, run the macro, then exit word, you could make the entering of the file name in Quicken a snap.

Create a macro that types in the text name - including path - of the .csv file you will use to import prices, have the macro select that file name and copy it to the clipboard, then exit the word processor. You could either run the word processor with the macro everytime you ran Quicken (with a little script), or selectively run the word processor/macro from the desktop when ready to Import Prices in Quicken. Wen you open the Import Prices dialog in Quicken, you need only press CTRL-v to paste the file name from the clipboard into the Quicken file name box.

You're probably speaking of me.

The "magic incantation" was "using Excel's Get External Data with a Web Query". There is (was?) an example that came with Excel showing its use to price a portfolio.

That said, if I was starting again, I would probably just build a portfolio at yahoo.com and have it download it as a csv file. The downloaded file even looks like it should import into quicken without needing to be edited.

Mike

I was. (I didn't forget your name; just wanted to give you the option to respond or not).

I still have an Excel file that does this, but I could not figure out how it was doing it; thanks.

I agree that a Yahoo csv file should be a simple way to handle this.

Using Q02, which I plan to keep for a while, I am downloading prices from Yahoo to Excel and importing same to Quicken.

Seems to work very well.

Put the download on C:\ so it will be easy to find and remember. Carl