Install the Alpha Vantage Office 365 Excel Add-in
The JavaScript API for building Add-ins for Office 365 applications shows a lot of promise. Unfortunately, it also gives the strong impression of a work in progress. Enough functionality is available for us to build a pretty cool Add-in to pull Alpha Vantage data into your spreadsheets. Here we’ll give you the pros and cons as well as the instructions on how to install the Add-in.
First of all the Add-in is for Office 365 only. This means that if you don’t have a subscription you will not be able to use the Add-in. On the other hand, if you do have a subscription you’ll be able to use the Add-in on desktop Windows, desktop Mac and browser versions of Excel.
Requirements and Caveats
If you have an Office 365 subscription you’ll still have to be on a Monthly or Insider channel to use this Add-in properly. The Add-in depends on a feature called dynamic arrays to return blocks of data from a function. At the time of this writing the functionality is not available on the Semi-Annual channel though the expectation is that the next update in July should contain the necessary functionality. Microsoft seems to generally recommend the Monthly channel unless your company has sensitive applications running in Excel. If you’re stuck on the Semi-Annual channel it is possible to use the Add-in but you’ll have to enter formulas as array formulas (CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER). It’s much more cumbersome than working with the dynamic arrays.
Setting your Office 365 Channel
On a Windows machine there are a couple ways to set the channel. Not as simple as it should be. Some helpful links
On a Mac OSX machine you can set the channel in the Microsoft AutoUpdate application. Insider/Slow is the same as Monthly.
Error Handling
The other main issue with the current JavaScript api is that it’s difficult (impossible?) to return useful error information from a failed function invocation. We’re waiting for wider release of error handling code (see :https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/custom-functions-errors). Our Add-in is pretty cool but don’t expect much information at the moment if something fails.
Installing the Add-in!
The Office 365 web Add-ins cannot be directly downloaded. The Add-in must be installed directly from Microsoft using an account with an active Office 365 subscription.
To download the Add-in from either a desktop or browser based version of Excel go to the Insert ribbon interface. On a desktop version of Excel this should look something like:
In the browser version of Excel this should look something like:
This will bring up an online store run by Microsoft. You can search for “Alpha Vantage” and install the Add-in from there.
After installation you should see a ribbon tab named Alpha Vantage(Web) added to Excel.
The actual ribbon will look like
In order to use this Add-in you will need a valid Alpha Vantage API key. You can request one here if you don’t already have one. On the Alpha Vantage(Web) ribbon tab select either the Info or Tasks button on the left. This will open a taskpane on your page. Scroll to the bottom of the pane and find the text box to update your API key at the bottom. If you have previously entered your API key you should see it here.
We’ll be publishing new blog posts soon on ways you can get the most out of the Add-in.
