An error shows in Bloomberg Excel when the monthly download limit has been reached on that terminal. The limits are reset at the start of each month. Bloomberg will not reset them early or extend the limits. You may see:
Monthly limit - # N/A Review
The monthly limit comes from a proprietary model based on unique securities and depends on the type of data being downloaded. Some data has more value and will use up the quota more rapidly. When the terminal is at its monthly limit users will see #N/A LIMIT error message in Excel.
The data limit will automatically reset on the first of the month. So all you can do is try a different PC.
Daily limit - #N/A Daily Capacity
The Daily API limit is 500,000 hits/per day and is reset at midnight. A “hit” is defined as one request for a single security/field pairing.
Open fields - “NA Limit”
You can have no more than 3500 real time fields open at the same time. If see “NA Limit” as an error message delete some securities/ fields in order for the error message to disappear and to see the values.
To test if the limit has been reached: open the Bloomberg terminal, log in, then open a new Excel workbook and paste in the following formula: =BDP("AAPL US Equity", "PX_LAST") If you get one of the above error messages, you've reached a limit.
Only download the amount of data you really need.
Disable automatic updates/refreshes – look out for background sheets.
Don’t use the Excel Add-In.
Instead download data from a regular Bloomberg function page. For example for stock price data use the function <GP> then right click on the graph and you can copy and paste the data into Excel.
Run analysis using Bloomberg Query Language - BQL.
You can run a query on a large quantity of data and get the answer with no need to save all the data. Refer to the BQL guide on Bloomberg for guidance – type BQLX <GO>
Use another database such as Capital IQ (with the Excel Add-In,) or Eikon which has the Datastream add-in for large quantity downloads.
If you are having issues contact the Library: Library@london.edu