How to properly use and enable MT4 Expert Advisors EA

It's very basic concept but for people who never used MT4 before it's still a very useful information.

First of all, before using of experts, one has to set them up first. Working parameters common for all experts are defined in the client terminal settings window. This window can be opened by the "Tools — Options" menu command or by pressing of accelerating keys of Ctrl+O.
Make sure you checked Allow automated trading. Otherwise the EA will not take any trade even if you load it on chart.








You should see a smile face at the top right corner of your chart when autotrade is enabled.





 Otherwise, it will be a unhappy face.

 

Shutdown

To shut down an expert, one has to remove it from the chart. Expert must have been deinitialized before it is shut down. To remove an expert from the chart, one has to execute the chart context menu "Expert Advisors — Delete" command or attach another expert to the same chart. Besides, the expert can be removed from the chart at profile or template change.

Attention: at client terminal shutdown, all experts are shut down, too; at chart closing, the expert attached to this chart will be shut down; at imposing of another expert, the previous one will be removed after confirmation; deletion of the expert from the "Navigator" window does not shut down the expert of the same name imposed in the chart; disabling of experts in the client terminal settings does not provide complete disabling of experts. This option stops launching of the start() function of each expert, but the init() will continue to execute.