[pcabc]

Thanks, I'll have to look into that. I get most data from Yahoo! or Google api's, I wonder if ADVFN have an API. Neither Google nor Yahoo! seem to allow access to FTSE index data via their APIs. Hence the use of ETFs.

They have something called DDE that runs their data to excel. Here's the link: http://uk.advfn.com/download-monitor/1

It looks like you have to install a windows app that makes the data available via DDE to local applications. I'm not running windows so I'm not sure how much use this is to me. However, it is something to think about for the future. Googling shows that index data is generally not available via an API (Application Programming Interface), the usual advice is to plot a correspoding ETF instead as they generally are available.