How to Create a New Chart with a Different Time Zone

How to Create a New Chart with a Different Time Zone

13 May 2026, 21:12
Ryan L Johnson
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If you are one of many traders across the world who need to shift/offset your broker-dealer's server time zone to a better time zone, Aleksandr Slavskii has kindly programmed a Period Converter service for doing so in MT5. Aleksandr Slavskii has altered his Period Converter Mod service for that purpose.

As a service, you should download Period Converter.mq5 to your MT5==>File==>Open Data Folder==>MQL5==>Services folder. Then you can either double click on Period Converter.mq5 in that folder to open it in MetaEditor and Compile it, or simply restart MT5.

To launch the service on any symbol that is listed in your MT5 Market Watch window, just double click on Period Converter under Services in your MT5 Navigator window, and specify the symbol. Next select of the Timeframes to convert. This setting depends on the timeframe that you're creating and the appropriate "resolution" of the shift/offset.

For example, you can't create an H4 custom chart shifted by 7 hours based on an H4 standard chart because the applicable minimum shifted time block would be 4 hours. 4 + 4 = 8, and not 7. In this case, the easiest thing to do is convert the M1 timeframe to 240, and set the shift to 420 (minutes). The shift is always set in minutes. Negative shift values are supported, so no one in the world is left out.

If you're building custom time zone charts while the market is closed, e.g., on the weekend, and the custom chart stops loading, change the replace/update setting to false. This issue likely arises on live broker-dealers' MT5 terminals because they kill connections when the market is closed. Metaquotes' demo (Beta) MT5 is different in that regard.

Note that you can't drag, drop, nor really even attach a service to a chart. It runs in the terminal, itself. That is a good thing because you don't need to have an extra "source chart" running on MT5 resources.

Many traders, including me, have been begging for decades to be able to change the chart time zone in MT5. Aleksandr Slavskii has finally solved that problem, and expressly allowed me to share his work publicly. Please respect the copyright included in the source code─pursuant to international law. Aleksandr Slavskii reserves all rights.

And if you have something that no one else can seem to code, why not go to the developer that has already done what no one else could do.

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