unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ and A
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Q) Are there any recommendations for assuring short- and long-term "survivability" of my Money data?
A) There are a number of Q&A that deal with specific backup issues. (E.g., "You must help me! My only floppy backup has a data error reading. What do I do?", "Can a new version of Money open my old version data file/backup file/backup diskette(s)?", "I just reinstalled M98--it can't read my data backup floppies. Now what?", and "How do I backup to CD-RW? CD-R?") None of these treat the subject in a general way. So, here goes:
The following general practices always apply:
Always test backups to be sure they really are.
Never depend on just one backup or form of backup as your only backup.
Always have multiple generations of backup in case you backed up a problem and didn't know it.
Never trust any media to provide "archival storage". Cheap media are worse. Trying to save on backup media is not wise. Even if the media lasts, the devices that can read this media may not.
Storing a backup across multiple media (e.g., spanning multiple floppies) reduces the availability of a good copy.
Depending on what risk you are trying to protect against, an offsite backup storage location may be a good idea.
Within these, some specific advice for Money:
The Money backup routine is not foolproof. Backing up the data file outside of Money seems slightly more reliable.
Removing password protection before making your backup is probably a good idea. This is true for two reasons: 1) you may forget what your password was when you made the backup--particularly if you follow "best practices" about changing your password periodically--but see also "Help! I've lost my password. Now what do I do?" 2) there is no assurance that Microsoft will perpetually support a given online authentication format or stored credential data format. (This is applicable to those using Passport/WindowsLive ID/whatever they call it into the future.) If you don't remove the password before taking your backup copy, at least record what the password was at the time and store it with the backup. The importance of removing/tracking your password is in direct proportion to the length of time you contemplate your backup is protecting you into the future.
Keep track of what version of Money wrote the data file/backup you are storing. Money has generally been pretty good about opening/restoring files made with older versions--and doing the necessary upgrade, but there is no guarantee that this will always be so. Indeed, there have already been breaks where getting from Money version A to C requires an intermediate upgrade to the Money version B data format using Money version B. Money has never provided a file format for data or backups that an older version of Money could read, so if you save, say, a Money 2007 file format but at some point in the future only have a copy of Money 2006, you will be out of luck. This issue is also more important the longer you want a backup to be good for and the number of versions back the file was written with.
A corollary to the previous item is that you may want to consider keeping/or need to keep copies of the original application installation medium. (This means your Money application installation CD or a copy of the installation image if you bought online. Note that OEM versions tend to be tied to specific hardware. Because of this, saving, say, Money04 for Dell Model XYZ may prove useless at that point into the future when you need it and your Dell XYZ has long since been shredded into little nuggets and recycled.) Note that this also assumes that you will have a system that supports installing and running this application at whatever point into the future you need to look at your backup data. Depending on the time horizon you are considering, it's not all that hard to imagine that, say, WindowsDominator x128 MegaUltimate edition won't actually run Money97.
(Note that there are also caveats to even this last recommendation: 1) Money files won't cross localization/language barriers. If the file was written with M05 for UK, past performance indicates it is highly unlikely that M10 US will read it, no matter what. Present trends suggest that the future of Money holds fewer localized versions than they've had in the past so if you are using a non-US version you must take this into account. 2) Keeping the installation CD alone may prove insufficient. One case where this is true is M05: the first and only mega-service update broke file compatibility with the CD version of the application. This might not be so bad if you could just, say, go and download the update file and store it yourself and install it yourself. But you can't because Microsoft's service delivery strategy for Money precludes it--the only way to update Money is to use its Internet Updates feature. Worse still, their present policy of terminating Internet Update service and removing data associated with End-of-Life versions means that a file written with M05.1 will likely be so many useless semi-random numbers in 2010 if all you have is the M05 installation CD.)
Which brings us to the final recommendation: At some point, accessing the information in your data may prove more important than how you do it and not all of the information may be equally important. Given the last several considerations, it may be prudent to periodically save a subset of the information in your Money data file to independent, non-Money-specific file formats. There are quite a number of ways to tackle this including MoneyLink and QIF exports, none of which gets all of the information Money stores, but the best way seems to be using customized reports and then exporting these reports to some portable format like .CSV or XML. Here are some report recommendations along those lines:
"Account balances With details" customized:
Rows & Columns: select all except Abbreviation
Account: all including closed accounts"Investment transactions" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all, Group by: none
Date range: all
Account: all including closed accounts
Investment: select all
Activity: select all
Details status: reconciled & unreconciled"Loan amortization" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all except interest amount, paid from account, other fees amount, principal balance; Subototal by: none; Include transactions from: account register; Show splits; omit (or include, your choice) opening balance
Chart: View as report
Date range: all
Account: (one report/output file per Loan Account)"Scheduled bills" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all; Include transactions: all; Show splits
Date range: all
Account: all including closed accounts
Payee: all; include transactions with no payeeCurrency-specific versions of "Account transactions" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all; Subtotal by: none; Running balance: none; Show splits
Date range: all
Account: (one report/data file per each currency; select all accounts in that currency including closed accounts)
Category: all; Show sub categories; Include unassigned income; Include unassigned expense
Payee: all; include transactions with no payee
Details type: all; status: reconciled & unreconciled
(classifications): select all; show subclassificationsNote that even this will leave lots of information behind including, but not limited to, Account/Category/(classification)/Payee/Investment details, Budget and DRP details, bill information beyond the next item in a bill series like end date/number and any edited series members beyond the first one, paycheck tab assignments, tax year assignment, transaction flags, and "attached" files. If there is any of this that you really want to protect, you will have to identify other means of doing so. Granted these methods are much less than ideal. But they also might prove a whole lot better than nothing at some point in the future.
Q) Can I do this, that, or the other with Money? Can the latest version of Money do this, that, or the other?
A) Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes these posts are general enough to get good answers from people who have attempted what you want to do. Other times, the requirement is so specific that nobody knows or nobody really understands what you want to do. In these cases, the best thing to do is download the trial version that is available and find out for yourself.
Two caveats about the trial version:
1) Read and heed the messages it brings up about what it will do to upgrade your data file from the previous version, if you have one.
2) If you like the trial version you will need to buy the real licensed version online and install it. If you do this, please read and heed "Can I do this, that, or the other with Money? Can the latest version of Money do this, that, or the other?".
References:
Microsoft Money Trial (US version)
Q) Help! I've lost my password. Now what do I do?
A) Passwords are there for a reason. When you forget them, you've discovered the reason. It's to make it harder for people who don't know the password to get at your data. That is why you used a password in the first place, isn't it?
If you use Passport authentication to control access to your Money file, just use the Passport lost password tools at the Passport site. (This is probably the best reason for integration of Passport authentication with Money.)
If you just used a file password, there are services and a number of software tools that do password recovery.
See also "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport and file passwords as access authentication schemes for Money.
References:
Money password recovery
Passport lost password help
Q) How can I prevent getting duplicate entries of Transfer transactions when importing accounts via .QIF?
A) When importing multiple related accounts that have transfers amongst the accounts via .QIF, it is imperative to select and import all the exported account files at the same time. To do this, hold down the CTRL key and select each file to be imported.
Q) How do I categorize multiple items all deposited at once? What about several paychecks?
A) For things besides paychecks, the category part is easy. You use the split. But the tougher part is if you want to list all of the payees. A Money transaction allows one Payee, no matter how many splits. This makes it hard to list ten payees for ten checks in one split transaction.
Some choices:
1a) Ignore the payees and put all the deposited items in one split transaction.
1b) Put the payees in the memo(s) and make the Payee something like (various).2) "Deposit" all the checks in separate transactions to some Money account that is not the real-world Bank account. If you have a pocket change account, for instance, this is a good place to do it. Then do a single transfer of the total amount to the actual Money account where these are deposited.
3) Ignore the fact that you deposited them in one deposit and create multiple Money transactions. This makes it slightly more difficult to reconcile vs. the bank statement since you have to remember that all of these small deposits in Money add up to that large deposit on the statement.
Re. #1, since a Money Paycheck is a special type of split, if one of the items deposited is a paycheck and you do full accounting in a Paycheck transaction, adding other checks to this deposits probably causes more confusion than it is worth. But you could do it. Just add them to the after tax tab. You can combine multiple paychecks in one paycheck transaction, but there are various reasons you probably don’t want to do this: First, it will be hard to reconcile all of the paycheck information from your stubs with one paycheck transaction. Second, the Money Tax Estimator assigns meaning to the first entry on the wages tab--this is the amount from which the “Before Tax” amounts are deducted--and you should watch Tax Estimator very carefully to make sure its results are sane if you are trying to combine paychecks into one transaction.
#3 causes grief for those who download transaction data.
Q) How do I find out about the free credit reports/bill pay/financial consultation/tax filing?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11) and up]
A) Once you have purchased and installed an applicable version, go to the task based home page. (There's a link in the left column--below the "So and So's Money Home Page" tripe--of the view oriented "Main Home Page" home pages.)
Once there, select the "Tell me more" link in the Financial Services section at the top.
An alternate, probably easier, way is to go to Help|Financial Services.
M05 moved this kind of stuff all around. In M05 one way (there may be others) is [Windows menu:] Tools|Financial Services.
Q) How do I make Money work for other WinNT/Win2k/XP Pro users?
A) Money does not deal well with the NT multi-user security model. It has to be reinstalled for each account and each account has to run as a member of Administrators group. (Per Cal Learner, this latter limitation is removed in M02.) There is an MSKB entry on the subject. There are some partial workarounds and there was a registry hack that solved some of the issues for non-Administrator users. I won't quote the registry hack here--if you are good enough to be mucking in the registry, you can certainly find it in groups.google.com.
References:
groups.google.com
MSKB: Q273815 Money does not work and play well with NT/2K/XP security
Q) I just got married/divorced/re-married. How do I change the names that show up on the Money home page?
A) Go to Accounts & Bills|Account Setup|Update personal information. Granted, it does seem odd that setting up all of Money doesn't really seem like a subset of setting up an account, but this is where these settings are hidden. M05 eliminated the personalization from the home page and the path to enter the personal information. Good riddance!
Q) I setup a Passport for access to my file because I thought I needed to, now I realize Passport is evil. How do I get rid of it?
A) Depending on version, go to File|Password Manager or File|Login Lockbox and remove the Passport.
See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport as an access authentication scheme for Money.
Q) I'm using Windows XP and want to have two users access the same Money file. What's the easiest way to do this?
A) Open "My Documents" under Windows Explorer. Find your Money file and drag it to "Shared Documents" under My Computer. Now all users can access the same money file in the "Shared Documents."
M05 refers to a feature they call "file sharing." It isn't. It's just a way of adding multiple Passports to allow access to the subset of data that is copied from the local file to MSN web servers and made available via the web interface.
Thanks to Chris for the original answer.
Q) Is there a way to mark several hundred old transactions as reconciled in one step?
A) There is no one step way to do this. The best way to do this is to set the view to show only unreconciled transactions sorted by date, select the earliest transaction you want to mark, hold down Ctrl+Shift. Hit M. You can hit M repeatedly or just hold it down to auto-repeat. Transactions will disappear--to reconciled status--pretty quickly, limited only by Money's performance on your computer.
Q) Money opens with my old email address. How do I tell it about my new one?
A) This indicates that your Money data file is set to authenticate access via Passport. So, what’s wrong here is that you need to update your Passport account and then update the Passport used with your Money data file.
First, login to your data file using the old email address. (If you've already changed the name at Passport and not in Money, you may have to login using the offline mode.)
If you go into File|Password Manager (File|Login Lockbox on versions before M04), on the File Password Settings tab, you should see Passport sign-in is enabled for… and Change… Click on Change…Select Disable Money's Passport features. Click on Next. Click on the Disable this Passport for use in Money check box. Click Finish. Click OK to have no passwords at all.
Exit Money.
Now, you have to change your Passport by browsing to the Passport web site. Select View or Edit your profile, sign in, under the old email address that is the Passport account name, click the link "I need to change this." Follow along from there.
Restart Money.
You should get this really annoying screen about setting up sign in security.
At this point, consider whether you need a Passport associated with your Money data file at all. See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on why you might or might not want to do this. If you conclude you don’t need it, just say no to the sign in security screen. If you feel you must associate your file with a Passport, continue on.
Select Yes; Yes, I want to use a Passport; Use an existing Passport. Click Next. Enter the new email address/Passport sign-in name and its password. Click Next.
Q) What if I don't want to use Money with Passport authentication?
A) When you install Money or create a new data file in versions prior to M05, you can "just say no" when it asks you to sign up for Passport. If you do this the first several times you start the application or open the file, it will give up asking.
M05 stopped trying to nag you into adding Passport authentication to your file. If you are determined to Just Say No, you won't get nagged. On the other hand, if you are new to Money and setting up a file for the first time, the new process would make you believe that not authenticating access to your Money file with a Passport (or a file password at least) is unnatural and immoral. It's neither.
Here's how to avoid the Passport/file password "requirement" in M05:
After File|New:
- Page: Thank you for using… (click Next)
- Page: Help protect your online Privacy and Security. (It says this in BIG TYPE--and who could argue with that? If you don't use a Passport, your data will be public and unsecured it seems to imply.) Passport has all kinds of issues not the least of which is we ship your data off to our servers. (It says this in little type in a scroll box that doesn't mention the problems you can have accessing your own data if Microsoft has a problem with the Money Passport servers) (click Decline)
- Dialog Box: Are you sure you really want to do such a stupid thing (click Yes)
- Page: A file password is a good thing (BIG TYPE again) don't forget it (little type) (click the I don't want check box, then Next)
- Page: To setup accounts you'll need the name of your primary bank and your online sign-in information from your bank (here you can click Skip Account Setup unless you want more of the hand-holding) (By the way, this isn't true, either. You can just select "not in list" as the financial institution and nothing bad will happen and Money will be highly functional and will work the way some of us have happily used it for a decade.)If you already setup to use Passport authentication and have now changed your mind, see "I setup a Passport for access to my file because I thought I needed to, now I realize Passport is evil. How do I get rid of it?"
See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport as an access authentication scheme for Money.
Q) What is the -s option? What is the Super Salvage utility?
A) These (and the File|Money File Repair menu choice added by M04) are the file repair tools.
See "I think my file has been corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do then?" for more information on these tools.
References:
MSKB: 182608 How to resolve file inconsistencies
Please see this disclaimer if you are using Money 2005 or this comment if you are using Money 2006.
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Last update: 10 December 2006 |
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