What are the MT4 Templates and how to use them?

The MetaTrader 4 trading platform offers users a lot of flexibility. Templates are one of the unique features that are offered on the MT4 trading platform. Understanding how to use templates can offer traders an abundance of options.

More importantly, traders who are used to analyzing the markets across multiple instruments will find the templates feature to be unique and in essence will make life easier, increasing your productivity as well.

Given the way that the markets are so dynamic, it makes a lot of sense to make use of the templates function on the MT4. In this article, we take a look at what templates are and how traders can customize this option.

What is the MT4 template?

A template, as the name suggests, allows you to save your chart settings. Once a template is saved, you can then apply this to just about any chart or instrument.

A template allows you to build custom chart type, cosmetic features such as colors, etc. The template can also allow you to save your chart drawings and indicators as well.

In the first chart below you can see that the colors and also the chart type are different. This is nothing but two different templates applied to the same instrument.

How to build your own template on MT4?

To build your own template, open any chart that you like. Then, make the necessary changes such as colors, chart type and also add any indicators that you want.

If necessary, you can also add some basic drawings to the chart as well (however, note that these drawings may not appear right if you apply the sample template to a different instrument).

After you make all the necessary changes, right click on the chart and click on ‘Template.’ Then select ‘Save Template’ option. This will open a pop-up window asking you to name the template.

Once you name and save the template, it is ready. You can now use it across any chart or instrument.

In the following chart, you can see that a template was created.

Here, we use the Bollinger band indicator and the RSI indicator. We save this template as ‘BB-RSI. ‘

Once the above template is created, what it does for you is that the next time you want to load the Bollinger bands and the RSI indicator to a new instrument; you can simply open the chart and apply the BB-RSI template.

This saves you tonnes of time (especially if you have three or more indicators on the chart).

Accessing the template files

The template files are stored in your profile folder. You can also access the template files, which have the extension .TPL. The main advantage is that you can now send this tpl file to your friends. It makes it a lot easier as it allows you to also save your indicator settings as well.

To access the MT4 template files from outside the MT4, go to ‘File’ in the menu bar and select ‘Open Data Folder.’ Then browse to the ‘Template’ folder where you can see all the template files as well as the ones that you just created.

Advantages of using templates in MT4

There are clearly a lot of advantages in using the templates function on the MT4. We outline some of them below.

• MT4 template files allow you to easily save and store your indicator settings. So once you apply the saved template to any instrumen, the chart is automatically loaded.
• Template files make it easy to distribute your chart settings including drawings. This makes it a lot simpler when you want to explain or show your technical analysis to someone else.
• When analyzing multiple instruments, templates can be a great way to increase your productivity.
• You can always save the TPL files and port them to any other MT4 account or terminal or even the broker that you use.