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So... 90% of the time ImportXML seems to work just fine for me, but now I'm struggling with the below 2 cases... I don't know if they are all the same problem or not, or if they are 2 different problems.

CASE ONE - YAHOO

  1. Go to this page: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/cash-flow?p=AAPL
  2. The number I want to pull to my spreadsheet is "Free Cash Flow"

My first attempt:

=IMPORTXML("https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/cash-flow?p=AAPL","//*[@id='Col1-1-Financials-Proxy']/section/div[4]/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/div[12]/div[1]/div[2]/span")

My second attempt:

=IMPORTXML("https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/cash-flow?p=AAPL","/html/body/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div/div[3]/div[1]/div/div[2]/div/div/section/div[4]/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/div[12]/div[1]/div[2]/span")

My third attempt:

=INDEX(IMPORTXML("https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/cash-flow?p=AAPL","//div[@class='Ta(c) Py(6px) Bxz(bb) BdB Bdc($seperatorColor) Miw(120px) Miw(140px)--pnclg Bgc($lv1BgColor) fi-row:h_Bgc($hoverBgColor) D(tbc)']"),1,1)

My fourth attempt:

=INDEX(IMPORTXML("https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/cash-flow?p=AAPL","//span[@data-reactid='277']"),1,1)

Nothing I do seems to work.

CASE TWO - MSN

  1. Go to this page: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/stockdetails/analysis/fi-a1mou2
  2. Click the "Price Ratios" link
  3. The number I want to pull to my spreadsheet is "P/E Ratio 5-Year Low"

My first attempt:

=IMPORTXML("https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/analysis/nas-aapl/fi-a1mou2","//*[@id='main']/div[2]/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[3]/div/div/div[5]/div[1]/div[2]/div[4]/div[1]/div/div/div/ul[3]/li[2]/span[1]/p")

I only tried once with this case because I suspect that the number sitting on an internal page tab might be causing the issue?

ANY solutions that automatically will pull the above two numbers into my spreadsheet are welcome, I'm open to workarounds with scripts/macros if ImportXML just isn't able to do it.

Rubén
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Nick R
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    If your this question has 2 questions, can you post them as the individual questions by updating this question and posting new question? If I misunderstood your question, I apologize. By the way, at `finance.yahoo.com`, there is an issue like https://stackoverflow.com/q/64437503 . In your situation, how about this issue? – Tanaike Jan 28 '21 at 05:31
  • Please, if you have two different questions ask them separately. Thanks ! – Mateo Randwolf Jan 28 '21 at 11:29

1 Answers1

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The reason why you can't get the data in MSN is because the specific element you have mentioned has been inserted dynamically on the website. IMPORTXML can only retrieve static content of a website and therefore, it will not be able to retrieve this dynamic content.

To check which content is static and which is dynamic, you can disable Javscript on your browser (as JS is the responsible of inserting dynamic content) and reload the page : the remaining content is the one you can access with IMPORTXML. In the website you provided if you follow these indications you will see how if you click on Price Ratios nothing will change as this content is not static. This is a simple guide on how to disable Javascript in Chrome.

Therefore, you will need to find an alternative method to scrape dynamic data.

DisappointedByUnaccountableMod
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Mateo Randwolf
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  • Any suggestions how I can get the same result? I'm happy to use alternaive websites, or alternative scrape > google sheets methods. – Nick R Jan 28 '21 at 21:16
  • Also... Based on your JavaScript being the problem, I went and found a site that had data showing without JS, and STILL can't get it to work. Check it out and let me know why it's still not working if you could possibly. Your help is super appreciated. Here's the non-JS site: https://www.gurufocus.com/stock/AAPL/summary – Nick R Jan 29 '21 at 04:00
  • Hi ! In this new website you just provided which specific data are you trying to get? For an alternative method you will need to look for an external tool such as creating a Chrome extension or maybe using a Javascript library. – Mateo Randwolf Feb 01 '21 at 08:05