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  4. Important Information
  5. Troubleshooting QCharts

How do I get rid of gaps in my Charts after a holiday?

ICE Data Services -

What causes these gaps?

As QCharts is Legacy software that is no longer supported by our Development Team, certain aspects of QCharts no longer work correctly; one of these such aspects is the Market Hours file updates.

In order to keep charts accurate, the Market Hours file will need to be updated before or just after holidays that affect Exchange hours. As QCharts is no longer able to update this file automatically, you will need to update this file manually so as to remove gaps in the chart caused by the Exchange closure during that holiday period.

How do I update the Market Hours file?

Before you download and install the Market Hours file, you will need to enable File Explorer to show file extensions, otherwise you will be unable to edit the ‘MktHours.txt’ to change the extension from ‘.txt’ to ‘.unf’. The instructions for this are discussed in the following section.

Note: If you have already done this and each file shows an extension (Ex: .docx, .txt, .exe, etc…) then you can skip this step and go to the “Downloading and Installing the Market Hours File” section.

Turning On File Extensions in File Explorer

To turn on file extensions in File Explorer, please refer to the following steps:

Windows 10

  1. Open File Explorer.
  2. At the top, click on the “View” tab.
  3. In the section labeled “Show/Hide” check the box next to “File name extensions”.

Windows 11

  1. Open File Explorer.
  2. At the top of the window click the “View” option.
  3. In the drop-down menu, select “Show”.
  4. Ensure that the “File name extensions” option has a checkmark next to it.

Downloading and Installing the Market Hours File

To download and install the Market Hours file, please refer to the following steps:

  1. Close QCharts.
  2. Download the latest version of the Market Hours file from here. (Last updated on 09/21/2023, and is good until 01/15/2024*)
  3. Open File Explorer.
  4. Navigate to your Downloads folder.
  5. Right-click on the ‘MktHours.txt’ file.
  6. In the context menu that pops up, select the “Cut” option. (Note: For Windows 11, its an icon that looks like a pair of scissors.)
  7. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\QCharts.
  8. Right-click in an empty space in that folder.
  9. In the context menu that pops up, select the “Paste” option.
  10. If the ‘MktHours.unf’ file exists already, delete this file.
  11. Right-click on the ‘MktHours.unf’ file you just pasted into the folder.
  12. In the context menu that pops up, select the “Rename” option.
  13. At the end of the file name where it says “.txt”, delete everything after the period (the “txt” part) and replace it with “unf”.
  14. Hit the “Enter” button on your keyboard.
  15. Close File Explorer.
  16. Launch QCharts.

*Note: QCharts has effectively reached End-of-Life and as such, we will no longer be providing an updated Market Hours file to correct any gaps in charts, and the product must be used as-is. While you may continue using QCharts if you so choose, if you need these gaps fixed we recommend switching to eSignal 21. A guide for switching from QCharts to eSignal 21 can be found here.