Currency conversion in Google spreadsheets

This is pretty useful and I can never remember the exact syntax, so here it is for me (and now you) to remember.

In a Google spreadsheet, you can do an online currency conversion that looks up the exchange rate in real time, making my life much easier.

For example to get EUR to GBP just type

=googlefinance(("CURRENCY:EURGBP"))

(note: if you copy and paste this and get an error, replace the quotation marks ( ” ) with your own. For some reason the blog template sometimes changes the quote symbol into it’s own format. I think I’ve fixed it but just in case…)

which will give you the rate ( you can then use that to convert existing cells to whatever currency you wish)

This makes it really easy to build an expense forecasting sheet like this that auto updates the exchange rate

           

.

date description amount EUR amount ZAR amount GBP

.

06/10/2009 Hotel Prince de Galles, Paris € 258.10   £232

.

08/10/2009 Butcher Shop and Grill, Johannesburg   R 5,346.00 £432

.

21/10/2009 Taxi – Amsterdam € 10.00   £9

.

21/10/2009 Helicopter: Monaco € 134.00   £120

.

01/11/2009 Hotel Monaco € 756.89   £679

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02/11/2009 Lunch Cafe Royale € 324.00   £291

.

         

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  Total     £1,762