By Martin Yerfo
MetaTrader 4 has many features that can help you save time during trading, today we are going to look at Templates and Profiles.
With Templates you will save a lot of time by customizing all aspects of your charts, you can use it for setting up different views of the chart, you can also load different sets of indicators and experts for each template.
You could have templates with different combinations of indicators and expert advisors and switch from one set to another very quickly by just right clicking on the chart on and then choosing the different template.
The best use of templates is to set up a Template with the name default, if you have a template named default, MT4 will load the default template every time you open a new chart from the Market Watch window.
You can also open several customized charts and then save the collection of charts as a Profile. Profiles can be used for example when you like to switch from a manual trading strategy where you have many indicators and chart customizations to an expert advisor trading style for when you are away from the computer.
Let’s go over the things that will be saved in a Template:
* Period: Is only saved for the default chart, if you applied a template to a open chart the period will not change.
* Colors: You can change the color of the chart background, Foreground, Grid, Bars, Volume, Ask lines and Stop levels by pressing F8 or right clicking on the chart and choosing Properties, you will find the color settings under the COLORS TAB.
* Charts Parameters: You can change the scale, auto-scroll, chart shift, type of bar/candle, OHLC, display of the Ask Line, period separators, grid, volumes and more by pressing F8 or right clicking on the chart and choosing properties, these settings will be under the COMMON TAB.
* Indicators: You can place any number of indicators and customize every indicator parameter.
* Expert Advisors: You can place an expert advisor on the charts and all its parameters on the Common and Inputs tabs will be saved.
Note: Be very carefully when placing an expert Advisor on the default template, because every time you open a new charts that expert advisor will run immediately.
There are many more uses of templates and profiles, you can save time and avoid errors by using these techniques on your daily trading.
About the Author
Full time Metatrader developer, programer, forex trader and marketing director
Professional forex trading system for Metatrader
