Note: Most people have complained that MSN Stock Quotes Add-in for Excel does not work anymore. I will suggest you to try another Stock Quotes Add-in for Excel which is a great replacement for the MSN Stock Quotes add-in. Try the new Stock Quotes in Excel Add-in.

You will often find the need to get the real-time stock quotes in excel for the purpose of analysis or tracking your portfolio. There are many ways you can get these quotes. In this article I will tell you about how you can make use of MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quotes Add-in for Excel for this purpose.

This article shows you the process in MS Office 2010.

The first step is to install the add-in. You can download the plugin from the following link:

MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quotes Add-in Download

If for some reason the link is broken, just send me an email, and I’ll send you the add-in file.

Once downloaded run the installer, and you are ready to go.

The add-in will appear as a separate toolbar, as shown below:

Click the “Insert Stock Quotes” button. A stock quotes window will open as shown below:

Enter the stock symbol, for which you want the quotes. In this case, we have selected only the last price. You can also get additional properties such as 52 Week High, 52 Week Low, etc.

Click OK and you will have the desired data in the selected cell.

Notice that the Add-in uses the custom function MSNStockQuote to fetch the data.

You can simply type a stock symbol cells A2, and get the price in cell B2. The results can be used anywhere in your model. If you want to track a bunch of stocks, simply repeat the formula in multiple cells.

UPDATE 1: If you are using Excel 2010 and are unable to get this plugin to work, then please try the instructions provided here.

UPDATE 2: For most people, the add-in has stopped working. Please check our post on alternative to MSN Stock Quotes Add-in.

UPDATE 3: There is a new stock quotes in excel add-in that does a great job of getting all your stock market research in excel. This is a perfect alternative to MSN Stock Quotes in Excel add-in. MarketXLS has everything you would need as an investor to manage all your stock portfolio needs within Excel. The add-in is designed to fit right within your workflow and provides you the required data the way you want. You can plugin this data within your financial models or portfolio spreadsheets and the data will refresh automatically keeping your numbers always latest.

Other than stock quotes, the add-in also provides data for futures, options, ETFs, and currency quotes. The add-in gives access to all the fundamental and technical data for the stocks including balance sheet, income statement, and cashflow metrics and hundreds of technical indicators and charts.

It works the same way and uses excel formulas to place stock quotes anywhere in your spreadsheet and plug the live stock quotes in your financial models and portfolio spreadsheets. There are over 285 functions to get you prices, fundamentals, stock success indicators, and more.

Try the new Stock Quotes in Excel Add-in