How to refresh offline charts without restarting MT4

I use tons of offline charts with tons of indicators displayed inside. Unfortunately, when time passes, those indicators display inaccurately as if they were repainting indicators. The only solution is frequent restarting of MT4. It looks like auto refreshing tools don't work on offline charts. Is there any quick and convenient solution for me? I run max 8 MT4 instances and restarting them frequently is somewhat a pain in the neck. Restarting chart windows is also the same and not helpful. Commercial solutions are also fine to me.

same problem for me. I am reapplying template and it works.
Good to know if any solution out there

Try using fixchart
with fixchart, your offline chart will always change automatically adjusting the maximum and minimum of the fixed chart

This fixchart uses 2 x Spread x values you entered

if spread = 10 points
and the value you entered is 35 then
the chart displayed = 2x10x35 = 700 points
The chart displays maximum price - minimum price = 700 points
If you use a Raw Account, you have to adjust the spread value manually (Ask-Bid in Points)


After you install AnoFixChart on the chart,
you can see the chart properties,
the maximum and minimum values will always change following price changes, but the value remains around 700

In my opinion, the real problem is not with your offline chart
but in M1 as the shaper of your offline chart, so try reducing your max/min bar value
Tools-Options-Chart

Thank you for the information. I already reduced the max bar number to reduce CPU usage on all the MT4 instances. It doesn't work. Also your indicator doesn't help my problem either unfortunately.

Let me be more specific. I use the following commercial software to display offline charts:

I watch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ..... 19, 20M charts using 4 monitors. Each chart contains tons of indicators. If my problem came from flaws in my software, I will purchase better software. Tell me the software.

If you use 8 MT4 Terminals, 1 Terminal uses more than 4 Pair Offline Charts (+ 4 M1 Charts)
with a Max Bar in History of 10,000,000
I suggest you use a Xeon E7 with 4 processors



If you use a computer with single processor specifications, you should use 2-3 MT4 terminals with a maximum of 2-3 charts per terminal, and even then you still have to reduce MaxBar History to below 2000
from my experience, using M1 is the heaviest, different from using 4 MT4 terminals with 4 H1 charts per terminal
As far as I know, all offline charts use M1 Chart, whether M1 is displayed or in the background

I already distributed offline charts with multiple MT4 terminals and total CPU usage is about 20-30%. My CPU is 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900 2.40 GHz.
My software even can display seconds charts such as 30s, 40s, 50s,.. etc.

CPU usage should not be a measure.
Some of my indicators and EAs have the same problem on M1 , Sometimes MT4 is not responding
but when run on M5 and above it is normal

Even for M1, it's already heavy, let alone the charts per tick, per 10s, 20s, etc
If you haven't found a solution then try step by step, use 1 Terminal with several M1 charts and below (20s, 30s etc.)
If the problem is still the same. then there is probably a bug in the software
If the problem is resolved then you only need to reduce the number of Terminals and charts

So far none of the proposed approaches addresses the real problem. The real problem is the calculated data in the indicator buffers getting out of sync with bars of your chart. I'll try to explain the standard online and the offline scenario:

(1) In the standard scenario (online chart) this is what happens in the terminal: On a new tick you calculate your indicator buffers as usual. As long as no new bars arrive you are updating only the last (youngest) buffer index, that's bar number 0. Now when a new bar arrives the terminal automatically shifts all your indicator buffers with the calculated data into the past (to the laft). In the most typical case one (1) new bar arrives and all buffers are shifted by one (1) to the past. It's important to notice that all buffers keep existing data, nothing is deleted. This means whatever you display on the chart is also shifted by one (1) bar to the left. So far so good.

(2) Now to the offline scenario. Here the chart is not updated by incoming ticks but by sending an internal MT4 message (a Win32 API message) to the chart. All offline chart generators work the same. This Windows message contains a MT4 specific command, let's call it ID_CHART_REFRESH.


That's the same command sent by right-clicking in the chart and selecting the "Refresh" command.


When an offline chart receives this command it reloads all chart bars from the offline file but - and here's the catch - the terminal doesn't automatically shift indicator buffers. Shifting of indicator buffers is performed only for online charts. And here is the cause of your issue. After some time plenty of new bars have been stored in the offline file and displayed but the displayed indicator is not in sync with displayed bars anymore. As a result your indicator calculations are invalid and useless - which you easily notice on screen. If you reload the chart template you essentially recalculate all existing indicator buffers, thus bringing offline chart and indicator in sync again, until the next new bar brings both out of sync again.

What can be done to solve this issue? There are two options. Both options require that you have access to the source code of your indicators and that you are experienced in modifying and compiling MQL4 code.

(1) First option: You programatically detect in your indicator whether you are running in an online or offline chart. There are various ways to do this. Now when you now that you are in an offline chart, instead of recalculating only the last invalid offset of your indicator buffers (bar 0) you always recalculate all bars. Thus bringing offline file and indicator forcefully in sync with every new tick. The drawback of this option: If you use many bars in your chart or indicator computations are expensive resource-wise, then this will slow down your terminal/charts significantly. Option 1 is the easy option.

(2) Second option: Typically one uses the function IndicatorCounted() or parameter 'prev_calculated' of function OnCalculate() to determine the number of bars to update/recalculate. In offline charts this function doesn't work as expected. It always returns all bars as changed (essentiallly enforcing the solution of option 1). Instead we can emulate the online functionality and if we detect new bars coming in, then we do manually what the terminal would do in an online chart. We shift our indicator buffers with calculated indicator values manually by the number of incoming bars. This shifting can be done in pure MQL but it's slow. I use a DLL function to let C++ do the job for me which is lightning fast. There is one function per buffer type and these functions are part of my MT4Expander which is open-source and available on Github. However, this solution is only suitable for very experienced programmers. In code it looks like in the 3rd screenshot and is part of start() or OnCalculate().

Here's the corresponding part of the MT4Expander. As you can see I use MoveMemory() which is the fastest possible way. No manual looping/copying needed as would be the case in pure MQL.

Hi, Emmzett
Thank you very much for details. Now I can better understand my problem. Unfortunetly, I cannot access the source code of my indicator as deverlopers didn't share the code. Anyway, I really appreciate your detailed information. It helped.
Thanks,

Hi heispark,
Thank you for bringing up this topic.
I'm also using offline chart for my trading.
This topic helps me a lot.

Hi AKCodingEye and Darwati,
Thank you for sharing your experience with offline chart.

Hi emmzett,
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience about offline chart indicator in details.
Very Valuable information about offline chart indicator works and online chart indicator works.
Thank you for explaining that in details with the 2 scenario. It is very good explanation.

Hi Guys,

Here are some additional references reading about offline chart "nature".
Many of the significant information about offline chart has already been mentioned by Emmzett in this thread.
1. source: MQL Forum . title : "Indicator Optimized for Offline Charts" . (2014.08.05)
2. source: MQL Article 2297 . chapter: 2.5. Economical Indicator recalculation on the offline chart . (2016.05.27)
3. source: Forex Factory . Thread 206301 page 9 . (2012).
4. source: Forex Factory . This Thread . (2024)

I hope these additional reference would made our understanding about offline chart "nature" better.
Thanks Guys.