So, You are in the Stock Market, eh?

A little over two years ago, I wrote about how you can easily pull up current Stock Quotes without ever leaving Excel. This is one of those “Oh, Wow!” Excel Guru Tricks you can use to amaze your friends and coworkers (not to mention gather excellent information). In light of the improvements and changes in User Interface (UI) that Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 have brought about, it is time to readdress this Very Cool feature in Excel.

Happily, the days of having to access your daily stock information via the local newspaper is gone. I remember scanning several stocks in the St. Paul Pioneer Press each day when I was a kid (I was a geeky kid – go figure…). Now, of course, there are a great many websites that can provide this information, but since you can do this in your Excel Workbook, (where you may wish to put the information anyway), why not do this with a few quick clicks and look like the Excel Rock Star that you are?

Here is how you go about doing this in the two newest Excel versions:

1. First of all list a few of your favorite stock symbols in a column (Column A is a good place to start) on your worksheet (e.g. SBUX, GOOG, AAPL, GM, etc)
2. Then choose a cell such as C1 and go to your Data Ribbon and select Existing Connections from the Get External Data grouping.
3. This will bring up a short list from which you should choose MSN MoneyCentral Investor Stock Quotes
4. An Enter Parameter Value box will appear, and you can simply choose the list of stocks you made in Column A
5. Excel will access the Internet in a few seconds, and Bam, your Information will be displayed in Glorious Detail!

Well, there you have it! Get your Stock Quotes Here! Get ‘em while they’re hot! Yeah, that’s the ticket…