Excel Alert

Discussion in 'Trading Software' started by daytrader85, Nov 13, 2006.

  1. Hi,

    I have data being exported to my Excel from TWS (Interactive Brokers). I was wondering if there are any FREE software out there, where I could get an alert to pop up if a cell hits a certain number. If you know of a way you can do it with Excel, that would be GREAT! Please let me know.

    I know you can get an alert on TWS itself, but this particular cell has a spread price between two different markts, and so IB doesn't except that kind of order.

    Thanks for your help.
     
  2. While MS Excel does not do Alert Popups per se, you can use the conditonal formatting tool to give you a color coded alert.

    Go to Format/Conditional Formatting and you can work witht the formulas there. Once you start working with it is easy enough to code number changes, spreads and ranges, either in the same cell or different cells.

    Regards,

    JJ

    edit: there is also an inexpensive software called Quotein which can assist you in your efforts, but that's $7 bucks a month.
     
  3. I use the Conditional Formatting already. I need an alert to go up if Excel is running in the background.

    Thanks though.
     
  4. Something like this may do what you want:

    Function popup(x As Double, y As Double)
    If x < y Then
    MsgBox (y & " is bigger than " & x)
    End If

    End Function


    You have to add some code so you doesn't fire off all the time. You can stick a function like this in a cell on a worksheet.
     
  5. Looked around, this requies coding (VBA, etc.)

    You can check here and see if it helps:

    http://www.mrexcel.com/

    Regards,

    JJ
     
  6. notouch

    notouch

    Spend a weekend learning the basics of Excel VBA (buy a book like Excel VBA in easy steps) and that sort of thing is simple to achieve.
     
  7. One small problem with doing it in VBA, for example in running the sample code above. Once the message box pops up it blocks the rest of Excel from running until the OK button is pressed (at which point the function exits and Excel continues to update with new data). Probably with what you're doing it doesn't matter. Ways around this are too sophisticated for here but it can be done, just not with VBA.
     
  8. Of course instead of a pop-up you can play an audio alert. This will block only as long as it takes to play. You can replace the MsgBox line of code with this:

    Application.Speech.Speak "Alert: Price Level Hit"
     
  9. We run the VBATimer Event code that <b>tests the a cell's value</b> every 1 secs, 2 secs, etc and and then plays a wav file if needed... and or charts it to something...

    I posted VBATimer code in an excel post before...

    cj...
     
  10. swandro

    swandro

    My favoured approach would be to launch something like Notepad to open a document with the required text - that way, it will be there for you to see even if you have left your computer for a short time, in which case you might miss an audio alert. This would also allow you to have more than one alert displayed at the same time if this is required.
     
    #10     Nov 13, 2006