On Google Spreadsheet how can you query 'GoogleFinance' for a past exchange rate?

Question

I\'d like to know if it is possible to query a past exchange rate on Google Spreadsheet.

For example; using formula =GoogleFinance(\"CURRENCY:USDEUR\")

Answer 1

For bigger spreadsheets, Google Sheets limitations usually will show randomly the following error:

Error Function INDEX parameter 2 value is 2. Valid values are between 0 and 1 inclusive.

Even modifying Index() and GoogleFinance() following the expected parameters GOOGLEFINANCE(ticker, [attribute], [start_date], [end_date|num_days], [interval]) the error will continue. A workaround is to copy smaller parts into new spreadsheets but often it will fail.

As an alternative, I used ImportXML as web scraper for x-rates historical currency exchange data.

=index(IMPORTXML("https://www.x-rates.com/historical/?from="&N2&"&amount="&K2&"&date="&YEAR(B2)&"-"&TEXT(B2,"mm")&"-"&TEXT(B2,"dd")&"","//td[@class='rtRates']"),1)

I'm assuming column B are dates, K is for amounts and N for currencies.

Randomly it also will fail for a 2000+ rows spreadsheet but overall for my requirement, it worked too much better than GoogleFinance()

ImportXML examples

The ImportXML Guide for Google Docs from beginner to advanced