Plot News / Downloader version 4.00

Files with all news events from FF calendar

Update (Saturday June 6, 2026): Daily ZIP files below have been updated with 'Actual' values and any revisions, up until 23:59:59 on Sep 30, 2025. The files from May thru Sept 2025 (below) are complete. Due to lack of interest/response, I'm no longer performing daily updates. If you want to do this yourself, please read the newly added section near the end of this post: How to download the FF calendar HTML and convert it to either CSV or XML format

I'm currently still providing weekly updates. The weekly upload has been completed. Files have been updated with news events from Jan 1, 2007 (FF calendar's start date) up to the week (Sunday to Saturday) ending Saturday June 6, 2026 23:59:59 UTC. This link will take you directly to the updated files on my Google drive. There are now a total of 89,342 news events across the 19+ year interval. I would upload the files to the forum here, but unfortunately many of them have grown to exceed FF's 5MB size limit, forcing me to post them elsewhere.

This thread hides away in the Commercial forum because nowadays I prefer to avoid too many lengthy discussions.
But please rest assured that everything is 100% free.

The files include the following data from the FF news calendar:
"Date", "Time", "Currency", "Impact", "Description", "Actual", "Forecast", "Previous", "Revised from", "FF event ID#", "Group ID#", "Actual better/worse", "Revised from better/worse"
In the case of better/worse: "1"=better, "2"=worse, "0"=N/A or negligible change

Whereas the XML file provided by FF (here) includes only data for the current week, and excludes the items shown in red typeface in the list above.


Customization: If you need different sorting, filtering, timestamping (to a different timezone), etc, please post a description of your requirement, and I'll see if it's feasible.

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News month by month since May 2025

Alternatively, if you need news events for only the last few months, then these can be downloaded from the ZIP files below. These files (so far) fit within FF forum's 5 MB size upload limit, hence I can post them here. The last file (for the current month) gets updated around 01:00 hours UTC each day (if I remember!)

In addition to CSV and XML formats of the news events, the latest uploads of the ZIP file also includes JSON, XML and XLSX formats of the raw data sourced from the JSON table in line 90 of the FF calendar HTML. Also included are the Plot News v4-00 b600.ex4 indicator (install in your ...\MQL4\Indicators folder) and Presets---Plot News.1 file (install in your ...\MQL4\Files folder), which allow the news events to be plotted as numbered circles (or any Wingdings characters) on your MT4 charts. Like this:

The PDF instruction manual for the Plot News indicator is also included in the FF calendar news events 2025-07-01 thru 2025-07-31.zip file below.

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News for May 2025 -- Daily upload (complete month):
CSV and XML files (UTC and NYC timestamped) with news events between 2025-05-01 thru 2025-05-31 (including 'Actual' values up to the end of 2025-05-31 UTC):

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News for June 2025 -- Daily upload (complete month):
CSV and XML files (UTC and NYC timestamped) with news events between 2025-06-01 thru 2025-06-30 (including 'Actual' values up to the end of 2025-06-30 UTC):

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News for July 2025 -- Daily upload (complete month):
CSV and XML files (UTC and NYC timestamped) with news events between 2025-07-01 thru 2025-07-31 (including 'Actual' values up to the end of 2025-07-31 UTC):

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News for August 2025 -- Daily upload (complete month):
CSV and XML files (UTC and NYC timestamped) with news events between 2025-08-01 thru 2025-08-31 (including 'Actual' values up to the end of 2025-08-31 UTC):

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News for September 2025 -- Daily upload (complete month):
CSV and XML files (UTC and NYC timestamped) with news events between 2025-09-01 thru 2025-09-30 (including 'Actual' values up to the end of 2025-09-30 UTC):
[uploaded 2025-10-06 21:46 UTC]

The above file includes 'Actual' values up to the red line (timestamps shown in the image below are UTC):

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NEW (2025-11-07):

How to download the FF calendar HTML and convert it to either CSV or XML format
If you want to build CSV or XML files yourself, please download and read the attached instructions:
[document last updated 2025-11-11]

Attached File(s)

How to download and convert the FF calendar HTML.docx   27 KB | 640 downloads | Uploaded Nov 10, 2025 12:06pm

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Update (Jan 9, 2025): This link will take you to the folders shown in the image below. The gold icons point to news events up to the end of previous months; the red icon to the end of the most recently completed month, and the green icon to the most recently completed week (Sunday to Saturday). You can check the date range in the name of the sub-folder.

All of this assumes that I remember to keep the files up to date.

_____________________
Bonus: Here are links to some other free MT4 news indicators by DerkWehler, FiatFap, euclid, mladen, Apiga and FXpulse.


Tables of named colors and wingdings symbols:

many thanks

Thanks David, this is very kind of you..

How's everything your end ?

Literally just signed up to say thank you.

This is useful for my "manual backtesting" as I practice trading support/resistance etc.

Thanks Hanover!

Hanover. big to you gratitude that you returned and you continue to adapt and develop the Plot indicator.
What broker of MT4, you recommend?
What platform: Win XP, Win 7, Win 8.1, what bit x32 or x64?
Thanks!

I've attached a screenshot of my current config. I've no idea how close it comes to an optimal setup (it's almost 2 years old now), but it seems to work OK for me.
___________________________

Thanks to everybody who posted words of appreciation.
Meantime, I've fixed a couple of minor bugs, and uploaded a new ZIP file to post #1.

Hi Hanover!
Very important at the beginning to have conditions as at you to understand as Plot News v4-00 works! I want that you continued to work on it! I will have questions, but I need to understand - as it works!
Thanks for the response and victory in your operation!

Thank you for sharing Hanover !

Fantastic! Thank you, thank you, your efforts are much appreciated. I've been looking for something like that for a while.

Brilliant job Hanover... works fine on ubuntu(14.04 64bit & wine) with both my brokers
thank you

Many thanks for the feedback -- it's good to know that it works correctly on non-Windows systems. Glad you find the indicator useful.

Hi Hanover,

Do you have a version of news downloader for 32 bit windows 7? It seems the installer on zip file is for 64bit only. . . Thanks!!!!

Not sure what you mean by the "installer". All you need to do is copy the files from their folders in the ZIP file to the same folders in your MT4 installation (under the ..../MQL4/ folder).

I'm running 64-bit Win7 hence I can't troubleshoot software that's running on 32-bit OSs.

If you're getting the generic error message "Unable to process calendar", please try unzipping the latest version from post #1, overwriting all existing files. I am progressively fixing bugs and making other modifications.

If that doesn't work, please post again to let me know, and I will try compiling the News Downoader using the 32-bit version of AHK.

Hi Hanover,

Attached here is the image of error when I first install the news downloader:

Hi,

Many thanks for posting the screenshot. A picture is definitely worth a thousand words.

I've compiled the .exe files as 32-bit Unicode (previously it was 64-bit Unicode), and updated the ZIP file in post #1. These seem to run OK on my Win7/64 bit configuration, so hopefully it will be necessary for me to maintain only one version of the software (for both 32 and 64 bit).

Please feel welcome to downlaod and try these new versions. You will need to unzip (and overwrite) all of the files.

David

Thank for sharing Hanover. I was wondering if it is possible to plot previous,forecast and actual figures?

Regards
FM

Hover the mouse cursor near the top of the symbols, to see help tooltips showing the news event's detail (see screenshot). See pages 2-3 of the instructions PDF for more info.

Awesome. Thanks a bunch

Best regards
FM

Hanover,
That's an amazing work! Exactly what I was looking for. And I am very impressed someone actually did the job and shared it for free.

Now would you help me to find the correct output format so as the final file will match the XML format of the weekly FF XML calendar?

http://www.forexfactory.com/ffcal_week_this.xml
I have an EA with News Filter based on this format, and this would be great to backtest the EA.

This is the closes I can get:

<event> <title>n[T50]</title> <country>c[T3]</country> <date><![CDATA[d[Y-M-D]]]></date> <time><![CDATA[t[H:I]]]></time> <impact><![CDATA[i[T10]]]></impact> <forecast /> <previous /> </event>

But I can't find how to change the time format to am/pm model...


Regards,

Pedro,

Thanks for your kind comments.

Try the following (copy/paste it as one continuous line):

That's the nearest I can get to the FF calendar's XML format, without making significant modifications to the software itself.

I will include this format in the dropdown list, in the next release of the software.

David