(Originally published on February 24, 2022 by Kaycee Reineke)
Hi there, I'm Kaycee Reineke, your friendly neighborhood Stock Data Type specialist from the Excel team. I’m here to share a change we made to the way stock quotes refresh by default. From now on, all Stocks data types in your workbook will refresh in the background when your file opens and every five minutes thereafter!
Refresh stock quotes automatically
When the Stock data type was introduced to Excel in 2019, we unlocked the ability to transform a cell from plain text into a multidimensional container of connected information. This allowed you to quickly get access to stock quotes and use them in your workbook. There was one caveat, though. In order to see updates to the linked data, you needed to manually refresh your workbook using the Data tab. We heard the frustration resulting from analysis on out of date quotes. Keeping your quotes up to date has been a top feedback request.
With this new experience, you'll save time and energy since your stock quotes will update in the background as you work, keeping your workbook as up to date as possible while you’re using it. If you prefer to have more control over the update cadence or find the automatic updates distracting, you can change this setting back to manual refresh, or to only update when the workbook first opens.
How it works
Since we are enabling this default setting for you, you won't have to do anything to start benefiting from automatic refresh in your relevant workbooks.
If you do want to change this setting, here is what you should do:
- Right-click a data type in your workbook, and then select Data Type > Refresh Settings.
- In the Data Types Refresh Settings pane, select the option you want.
Data Types Refresh Settings
When you change this setting, it is saved with the workbook.
NOTE: This is a workbook-specific setting. Any new workbook you create will use the Automatically every 5 minutes default setting.
Tips & tricks
- Not all data types can be automatically refreshed, so you won't always have that option available in the workbook settings.
- The "Last refreshed:" indicator shown in the pane doesn't save across Excel sessions. When you open your workbook for the first time, you will see "unknown." This is normal and expected. When you perform a refresh (or Excel refreshes automatically), you will see the updated time.
- If Excel encounters an error when attempting to refresh your workbook, you will get a notification banner alerting you. The error will persist until resolved. If you want to focus on your content and not address the issue immediately, you can switch to the Manually option in the Data Types Refresh Settings pane to stop automatic attempts. If you don't know how to resolve an error, check out tips from this support article.
Learn more about automatically refreshing data types.
Known issues
It's important to keep in mind that Microsoft contracts with data providers for access to agreed upon exchanges and instruments, and not all of these sources make data available in real time. You can view a detailed list of supported exchanges and the delay time on stock quotes here.
Availability
This feature is available to all users in Excel for the web, and to Office Insiders running Version 2201 (Build 14827.20158) or later on Windows, or Beta Channel Version 16.57 (Build 220111) or later on Mac.
Don't have it yet? It's probably us, not you.
Features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as an Insider, have had the opportunity to try it.
Feedback
We hope this is a significant quality-of-life improvement for those of you already using Stocks data from Excel, and an enticement for those of you not using it yet.
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