Tim Black hosts the live trading room for the Asia trading session. His background is in computers and technology. He is addicted to technology, charts, and technical analysis. Black enjoys teaching and sharing his viewpoints in these areas.
MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is arguably the most popular trading platform on the market today. I know, it has its annoying quirks, but many brokers have adopted it as their primary platform. As many of you know, there are hundreds of sites with thousands of MT4 Expert Advisors (EAs), also known as robots, and indicators available, many of them free of charge.
EAs and indicators are distributed in two forms (once they are unzipped/unpacked from archives): the executable (with .ex4 file extension) and the source (with .mq4 file extension). For part one of this miniseries, I’ll be talking about installing the executable EA. I’ll discuss what to do with the source in my next post.
I wish it were a simple step 1, step 2, step 3 process to install an EA. It’s close to being that simple, but you have to know some things about your MT4 installation. To start (you’ll only have to do this the first time you install your own EA), you have to find the folder where your MT4 installation is located. To do this, right-click on your MT4 shortcut (the icon you click to start the platform on your computer) and select Properties.
Be sure the “Shortcut” tab is selected and look at the field labeled, “Start in.” This field should contain the name of the folder in which your MT4 is located. Click the “Find Target…” button, and a Windows Explorer window will open showing your MT4 folder. Right-click on and drag the “Experts” folder and drop it on your desktop.
Select "Create Shortcuts Here" from the menu that pops up. 
You now have a shortcut on your desktop to the Experts sub-folder of your MT4 folder. Once you’ve opened the Experts folder on your desktop, the next step is simple. If you have an EA executable, drag it and drop it in the Experts folder. If you have an indicator executable, drag it and drop it in the Indicators subfolder of the Experts folder.
Now restart your MT4 platform, open the Navigator tool and you should find your EA or indicator there.
And that's about it on how to install indicators for mt4. In the next installment, I'll discuss how to handle "un-compiled" source code EAs and indicators (with the .mq4 file extension.) Read more about indicator strategies here.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2020
Thank you for reading!
Please leave a comment below if you have any questions about Installing MT4 EAs and Indicators!
Also, please give this strategy a 5 star if you enjoyed it!
[ratings]
With over 50+ years of combined trading experience, Trading Strategy Guides offers trading guides and resources to educate traders in all walks of life and motivations. We specialize in teaching traders of all skill levels how to trade stocks, options, forex, cryptocurrencies, commodities, and more. We provide content for over 100,000+ active followers and over 2,500+ members. Our mission is to address the lack of good information for market traders and to simplify trading education by giving readers a detailed plan with step-by-step rules to follow.
Thank you ! Casey ,
I was searching for the complete technical know-how for MT4 . Your post's has always liveed up to your slogan, "helping forex trader see the light" .
I am very keen to follow this post , to know every thing about using MT4 .
I had not tried this , but , Few days back i learned that to install EA's in MT4 , we need to open EA folder in MT4 , and copy paste desirable EA in this folder and restart . on charts we get option to put EA in use . but , how to bring it on chart is mistery for me :p
please please , do include this articles to 'Tutorial' on 'Winners Edge Trading' . so , i even if any post is missed , new bee's could learn MT4 .
Thanking you ,
warm regards
Swapnil .
This is a great help for those who are new to Forex trading and for those who are first time expert advisor buyer. I am very happy I have found this site!
[...] structure and execution to the C programming language. I have written quite a bit about MT4 here, here and [...]