Introduction
Excel is improving both as a spreadsheet program and as a provider of information and visualisation program, too. One of the things we can do with Excel now is automatically import share price and related information (that’s stock prices for our US cousins!). I have created a video that shows you how to use this feature to import the data as well as showing you how you might use the feature for data analysis.
The Video
Watch the video and create your own list of shares to work with. Then use my ideas and your own ideas for analysing the data you find.
I do not know the full list of shares you can import data from but be aware that the data comes from more than just Wall Street. That means you can review the performance of companies from wherever you are.
Updating the Table
What happens when we update our table of Stocks data? I did not include this in the video so you are being rewarded for continuing to read these brief notes.
In the video, we finished with Campbell Soup Co in row 12 of the worksheet. Assuming you are still connected to the internet, in cell A13 type Netflix or NFLX or Netflix Inc and press enter or Ctrl+Enter … What happened? Now type WMT in cell A14 … what happened?
OK, as a bonus, I am including here a GIF of what happened when I then added Facebook by entering FB in cell A15 and by typing Pfizer in cell A16. Watch this:
How about that!
The Spreadsheet
You can also download my spreadsheet to work along with this video and as you do so, notice that the layouts of three of the worksheets are a bit different from what you see in the video: nothing is broken!
Geography
There is a Data Type for Geography too, that you might find useful although I have not discussed it in my video or in the Spreadsheet: if you can use Stocks, you can use Geography! Just enter the name of a country or city, click Geography and you will see the same system as with Stocks.
The Future
I know Microsoft is looking for ideas of other Data Types to include in Excel so feel free to write to them with your suggestions.
Duncan Williamson
15th February 2019
Download Excel File data_types_stocks
Watch the Video
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