The constant volume bar option, updates a new bar after a certain amount of volume has completed. This amount should be entered into D3 of the “Live” sheet. Checks are in place to prompt if the values are not entered and the constant volume is set to override the default time based bars.

Below is an example of Constant volume bar charting. You will notice that each bar contains roughly the same amount of volume.

This post answers the following question.

“I have recently been trying to chart historical data in Excel in a bar chart format and found the “canned” graph allows only for high, low, and close, but not the open.  Do you have a simple way to add the open tick to a bar chart in Excel?”

There are four types of stock charts included in excel.

High Low Close

Open High Low Close

Volume High Low Close

Volume Open High Low Close

Select the Open High Low Close option.

If you want to also plot volume which I suspect may be the case, I always just used the Open High Low close chart then add in the volume as a new bar chart on the stock chart. To do this:

first setup your stock chart with open high low close. It should look something like this.

Next

click on the outer edge of the chart so that it is highlighted, click on “chart” from the menu bar and select “add data”. Select the volume column as your data.

Now your chart will look messed up because volume is plotted on the primary axis (along with price).

To change this just right click on the volume bar series (on the chart itself) and select “format data series”. next click on the “axis tab” and change to “secondary axis”. Next you may want to change the secondary axis scale so that volume stays way down below price. Once that is done your chart should look something like this.

1. Excel 2007 Bible - It is important to have one book that just covers excel (not Visual Basic and Macros) so that you don’t unnecessarily use VBA for performing calculations better handled by formulas. The channels and trend lines in my videos of sim trading the ES are formula based not VBA based like most people seem to think. I probably could not have figured it all out without this book.

2. Excel 2007 VBA Programming For Dummies

3. Excel VBA in easy steps by Ed Robinson – By far the best beginner book but often out of stock. It’s only 188 pages but covers a lot of material in a very clear and concise manner. The examples are easy to understand even with no prior programming experience. If you have no prior VBA experience this is a great first book. Barnes and Noble is the publisher. The price on the cover is 9.95, but since it is out of print people are currently selling it used for $50 to $100 :(

4. Excel VBA Macro Programming - If Excel VBA in easy steps is out of stock, this may be a good alternative judging from the reviews. I have not personally used this one though.

Best Intermediate and Advanced books

1. Excel Hacks is filled with original content and examples. I have a lot of Excel books and thought I knew about pretty much everything until I bought this book.

2. Excel 2007 VBA Programmer’s Reference This enormous book should be used for reference. It has a great index so you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out how to do some simple task. If you have used my earnings.xls workbook that automatically downloads stock’s earnings dates, then you have already benefited from this book. I used an example from the 2003 version of this book to learn from!

*Be careful about buying multiple books by the same author because there is a lot of repetition and they often put out practically the same book but with a different co author, book name and Cover!