On Google Spreadsheet how can you query 'GoogleFinance' for a past exchange rate?

In order to retrieve the historical rate, you have to use the following formula:

=GoogleFinance("eurusd","price",today()-1,today())

where today()-1, today() is the desired time interval, which can be explicitly defined as the static pair of dates, or implicitly, as the dynamically calculated values, like in the example above. This expression returns a two-column array of the dates and close values. It is important to care about the suitable cell format (date/number), otherwise your data will be broken.

If you want to get the pure row with the date and currency exchange rate without column headers, wrap your formula with the INDEX() function:

=INDEX(GoogleFinance("eurusd","price",today()-1,today()),2,)

To retrieve the exchange rate value only, define the column number parameter:

=INDEX(GoogleFinance("eurusd","price",today()-1,today()),2,2)

To get today's currency exchange rates in Google Docs/Spreadsheet from Google Finance:

=GoogleFinance("eurusd","price",today())

A shorter way to get today's rates:

=GoogleFinance("currency:usdeur")

P.S. There is also the way to get live currency exchange rate in Microsoft Excel.

Try,

=GoogleFinance("usdeur","price",date(2013,12,1),date(2013,12,16))

Make sure that the dates are as per your spreadsheet settings.

Edit as comment, changed date for capturing single day data:-

Only with headers:

=INDEX(GoogleFinance("usdeur","price",date(2013,12,3),date(2013,12,4)),,2)

without headers:

=FILTER(INDEX(GoogleFinance("usdeur","price",date(2013,12,3),date(2013,12,4)),,2),INDEX(GoogleFinance("usdeur","price",date(2013,12,3),date(2013,12,4)),,2)<>"Close")