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On 08/22/2014 11:05 AM, Mark Bourne wrote:
Jim Byrnes wrote:
On 08/21/2014 03:16 PM, Mark Bourne wrote:
Jim Byrnes wrote:
I would like to import some stock quotes from finance.yahoo.com into a
calc sheet.

As a test I select cell A1
Insert-->Link to External Data and I get the External Data dialog
Put http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=AAPL&f=a in the URL box
The OK button stays greyed out
I hit ENTER and I get a Text Import dialog with a number in the Fields
section

When I hit OK I am sent back to the External Data dialog, OK button
still greyed out and when I close the dialog, nothing is entered in A1.

What do I need to do to get the stock quote entered in the cell?

I haven't used that feature before, but
https://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Link_to_External_Data says:
Link to External Data
Inserts data from an HTML, Calc, or Excel file into the current sheet
as a link. The data must be located within a named range.

The URL you're using points to a CSV file, which doesn't contain a named
range (CSV is a very basic format, and doesn't support naming ranges).
Using an ODS file with a named range works; after selecting the file,
the ranges defined within the file are listed in the lower part of the
"External Data" dialog, and the OK button is enabled once once is
selected (with a CSV file, there are no ranges to select so OK is never
enabled). But that's clearly no use to you unless Yahoo provides the
data you want in that format...

OK I understand now.  Just seems strange that I can get the data I want
in the Import Text dialog (just as I have done many times when importing
csv files) but I can't get it into the spreadsheet. When I click ok in
the Import Text dialog, focus goes to the Insert Dialog and the data is
lost.

It is a bit confusing. I think the Import Text dialog is needed to open
the file - being plain text, it can't automatically determine things
like the character encoding and whether cells are separated by commas,
tabs or something else. Then, after opening the file, it finds that
there are no ranges defined within the file. It would be more sensible
if it gave some message that there are no named ranges in the file. Or,
rather than requiring a named range, allow the whole sheet to be
imported - but perhaps that's the purpose of the Insert > Sheet from
File option.

It may be possible to pick up data from a table on an HTML page. That's
liable to stop working when Yahoo change the layout of the page though,
requiring you to go through the Insert > Link to External Data again to
find the table in the new layout, but might work well enough.

Another possibility may be Insert > Sheet from File, specify that URL
rather than browsing to a local file, and select the "Link" option. It
seems to be rather slow to import (maybe that's just my Internet
connection), and I'm not certain if it will actually update as intended,
but probably worth trying. I'd suggest not modifying the imported sheet,
in case either you loose your changes when the sheet is updated or
modifying it prevents future updates. You can then reference cell A1
from another sheet, which should then pick up changes assuming the
imported sheet does update as intended.

When I try this option I don't see any place to specify the URL, all I
see is a file selection dialog.

You can type (or paste) a URL into the "File name" field and it will
open it. What I'm not sure of is whether it will automatically update as
intended; may need some experimentation.

Yet another option may be to set up a LibreOffice Base database
connection pointing at the CSV file as its data source. (File > New >
Database > Connect to existing > Spreadsheet > Next > Enter URL > Next >
Finish). Not sure offhand if or how you can reference that from your
spreadsheet though, and it is getting rather extreme just to get a
single number!

The whole thing is getting complex.  I just wanted to link about 10
cells so I wouldn't have to type in the data manually.  Not a big
problem it's just that I am always looking for ways to automate stuff.

Always handy when possible ;o)


Thanks to everyone that offered advice on this problem. I found a possible solution here:

http://amourtan.com/2013/03/downloading-stock-prices-into-openoffice-calc/

It works but is a little bit of over kill for what I need. Hopefully this weekend I will have a chance to look at the code and get some ideas of how to adapt it to my simple needs.

Regards,  Jim



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