MS Windows Spreadsheet Linking using DDE
Investor/RT for MS Windows uses DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) to provide market data to other applications such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc. Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.org software package. It is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. In order to create a link in your spreadsheet, you type a formula into a cell. The formula specifies the ticker symbol and the name of the data item you want Investor/RT to place there. The cell formula must be written in this form for Microsoft Excel:
=rt|symbol!data_column and in this form for OpenOffice Calc:
=DDE("RT";"symbol";"data_column")
where symbol is the ticker symbol and data_column the name of the data column you want, e.g. Last or V#1. The data column names are the titles Investor/RT uses in quote pages. To see a complete list of data column names you can link to your Excel spreadsheet, open an Investor/RT quote page and click the "Add New Column" button on the toolbar. A list of quote page column names will then appear. Another way is to use the Setup: Preferences: Formats window. A full list of column titles appears on the left side of that window.
The letters in the data column name are not case sensitive. You may abbreviate a column name by entering only the first few letters. Thus =RT|AAPL!LAST is equivalent to =rt|AAPL!la. Note that the ticker symbol much exactly match the ticker symbol you want in Investor/RT, usually it is all uppercase letters. This formula places the last price of Apple Computer into the cell.
Certain characters, such as $ and left parentheses have special meaning to Excel, and therefore will cause an error if you use them in your formula. Spaces within names also cause a syntax error. If an Investor/RT data column name has imbedded spaces or special characters, you must enclose the name with single quotes('). For example, Investor/RT has a field named (H+L)/2 used to show the average of the high and low price for the day. To link this column, use the formula:
=rt|AAPL!'(H+L)/2'
Note that the same thing applies to ticker symbols that contain spaces or special non-alphabetic characters. Use single quotes around such tickers, e.g.
=RT|'$INDU'!Open
MS Windows 2000/XP DDE Is Available
The DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) feature of Investor/RT has been improved and works properly under Windows 2000 and Windows XP providing "hot links" between MS Excel spreadsheet cells and Investor/RT. The general format for Excel linkage to Investor/RT is:
=RT | ticker ! data-designator
where ticker is the ticker symbol. Enclose ticker in single quotes if the ticker symbols contains spaces or other non-alphabetic characters such as #, @, or $.
Data-designators can be expressed as a data column id number or as a data column name. For example:
=RT | INTC ! Last
will setup the Excel worksheet cell to dynamically update as the last price changes. Each data column in Investor/RT also has a data column id number. To find the DDE data column id number for any column use the Setup: Preferences: Formats window. Pick the data column of interest in the list on the left and click the "Get Info" button to find the number of that column. For example, the 52WeekHigh data column has id number 21, while the Last data column has id number 2.
=RT | INTC ! Last and =RT | INTC ! 2 do the same thing.
=RT | MSFT ! 52Week and =RT | MSFT ! 21 do the same thing.
The Investor/RT DDE now supports the "System" topic. Use "System" as the ticker symbol and "Version" as the data designator to obtain a description of the version of Investor/RT that is supply the data and the data service in use, i.e.
=RT|System!Version
Macintosh Classic Spreadsheet Linking
Macintosh users must install Linn Software's spreadsheet link software for Excel. See the Spreadsheet link folder in the Investor/RT folder for installation details.
The Investor/RT Spreadsheet Link function for Macintosh has the format:
RT(ticker, field)
where ticker is a ticker symbol in double quotes (e.g. "AAPL") or a reference to a spreadsheet cell containing the ticker symbol and
where field is a field designator in double quotes (e.g. "LA") or a reference to a spreadsheet cell containing the field designator. A complete list of field designators for Investor/RT release 1.0 is shown below.
Examples:
=RT("IBM","VO") returns the current volume for IBM.=RT("AAPL",C1) returns data on Apple Computer based on field designator in Cell 1.=RT(A5,B1) returns data on Ticker in cell A5 based on the field designator in Cell B1.=(RT(A1,"LA")+RT(A1,"HI")+RT(A1,"LO")/3 returns the average of high, low, and last for the ticker symbol in cell 1.