Quaccess - Download Yahoo! stock quotes into an Access database

Quaccess - Download Yahoo!Finance™ stock quotes into a MS Access™ database

Quaccess Help

First steps for first time users

For all those running Quacces for the first time, here is a step by step guide on how to download and view some Yahoo! data:

Make sure you are online to the internet.
Click 'UpdateGroups' on the main menu.
Search for the group 'US Dow Jones Industrial 30' and mark (click into) the empty square in column 'Check' on the same line.
Click on the button 'Update' - after a few seconds, the status for that group should change to 'OK'.
Close the current window.
Click on the large button down below which says 'Update quotes for 30 tickers'. Updating can take a little while because Quaccess will now download current data and some historical quotes for all 30 Dow stocks.
Click on 'ViewCharts' to see the charts of your freshly downloaded stock data.

Explanation of some forms and menu items

File, Compact Database:
Those familiar with Microsoft Access databases know, that MDB files cannot release once occupied file space. The result is that with time, Access MDBs allocate much more disk space than necessary. Compact Database releases this unused space and compresses quaccess.mdb to it's minimum size. Let this run whenever you think you need some disk space back or the performance of Quaccess decreases due to this effect. Under normal circumstances once a week should be enough.

File, Do Calculations:
After every download, Quaccess does automatically a calculation of some key statistics. But in case of an error during download or any other interruption, it is possible that the calculation was omitted. Only in this rare case you should Do Calculations to reestablish the integrity of the Quaccess database.

Update Predefined Groups:
In case you want to follow more stocks than just the ones in your portfolio, Quaccess offers some predefined ticker groups like the DowJones30 or big ones like all stocks traded on the NASDAQ. Quaccess "knows" where on Yahoo!Finance it can find the composition of each group. As that composition changes from time to time, it is recommended to update predefined groups occasionally. Click in that small empty square in column "Check" to mark a group for update. Stock symbols that after an update are no longer part of a group will be shifted into a newly created extra group. Column "Discontinued" will indicate how many these are.

Edit Groups:
This is the place where you manage groups and their members - the ticker symbols. Let's say you would like to track the biggest 3 car manufacturers. Before entering the tickers you want to create an extra group. Having the form Edit Groups on your screen you click into the left area and hit the <Ins> key. Type "Cars" as the name for this new group. Now click into the right area and hit the <Ins> key to start entering the ticker symbols. The cursor will blink in the empty ticker field of a newly created record. Type "HMC" followed by a <DownArrow> key, then "TM" <DownArrow> and "DAI". That's all. Your group of 3 stocks is complete.

How to populate a Quaccess group with the help of an SQL query

Let's assume, you have already created and filled with data the 3 big US groups NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX. Now you'd like to create a group containing only large cap (10B+) US stocks with positive earnings:

Inside Quaccess create a group called "Large Cap".
Open the database Quaccess.MDB with MS Access.
Create and run the following SQL query:

INSERT INTO Members (mGroup, mTicker, mMemo, mStamp)
SELECT gGroup, dTicker, dExchange, dLastUpdate
FROM Groups, Data
WHERE ((gGroup = "Large Cap") AND (dCurrency="USD") AND (dMarketCap > 10000) AND (dEPS > 0));