unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ and A
[ Home ]
Q) Can Money import my Quicken data? How about my current version Quicken data?
A) Money has provided Quicken conversion tools in all recent versions of Money. These converters have supported import of the "previous" version of Quicken and older versions. Since Quicken changes their file format every year and Microsoft and Intuit release about the same time each year, Microsoft cannot provide a converter for the current version of Quicken in the box with the current version of Money. They used to release a converter to get from the current version of Quicken to the current version of Money in late spring, but have not done this for several versions now. If they resume this practice in the future, the Money web site will reveal this first.
References:
Microsoft Money web site
Q) How do I access the Money API (OLE, XML, ODBC, object model, Jet database, MSISAM database, etc)?
A) Any external programmatic interfaces for Money are undocumented, unsupported, and without any promise of retention in the future.
Certain ISVs (Ultrasoft and Kiplinger/H&R Block come to mind) have implemented programmatic interfaces to Money, presumably with help from Microsoft. Try contacting Microsoft directly. Let us know how this works.
Money does support OFC/OFX for interchange with financial institutions. (E.g., statement download, EPAY.) If this is what you want to do, refer to the Microsoft Partner, Microsoft Active Statements Interface, and Open Financial Exchange links.
Thanks to Cal Learner for the OFC/OFX interface info.
References:
Microsoft Active Statements Interface
Microsoft Money Partner
Open Financial Exchange
Q) How do I export to Excel (or .TXT, .XML, .CSV)?
A) There are several approaches to exporting data. None of them solve all problems.
Money has always supported "export to QIF." QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) is documented and an Excel macro exists to write to this format. You could extrapolate from this macro how to go the other way.
Money reports can be copied to the clipboard. They can then be pasted as plain text into Excel cells.
Money 2002 added some enhanced capabilities in this regard with a direct "Export to Microsoft Excel" that writes .CSV files. (Obviously, there is nothing unique to Excel about .CSV files.) They can also be exported to a tab-delimited .TXT file from the "Export…" r-click menu on the report.
Money 2003 added a choice to export reports as "Send to Desktop." This writes .CSV, .TXT, and .XML files to you desktop with the report data.
Finally, there is the MoneyLink Excel add-in. This add-in provides a number of queries (e.g., account transactions for specified account for specified date range) that can retrieve data from your Money data file into Excel. It's a one-way trip only. Money-version-specific versions of the add-in are available for Money 98 through Money 2003. MoneyLink does have some specific limitations. For instance, it does not retrieve classification or the parent of split transactions.
The MoneyLink add-in was a download for Money 98. Then it was included on the CD with Money 99 and Money 2000. With Money 2001, Microsoft thought nobody would notice if they removed it. After a great upheaval on the newsgroup and on the support lines, they relented and made MoneyLink available on the web. Beginning with Money 2002, they have left it off the CD. For Money 2002 and beyond (through M06 at this writing), it is available, for free, from Ultrasoft. What transfer of responsibility for this tool from Microsoft to Ultrasoft means for its future, no one can say.
Thanks to Myrna Larson for the tab-delimited export method.
As of August 20, 2004, links for the M98 and M02 download are still (back?) available. Thanks for this correction provided by Pete.
References:
Microsoft M98 and M01 MoneyLink download links page
Ultrasoft (MoneyLink)
Q) How do I import from Excel (or .CSV or etc.)?
A) Money can only import .QIF format data, entire Quicken files (into a new Money file, with the restriction that it be from an older version of Quicken than the version of Money doing the importing) and, in more recent Money versions, OFX and OFC format data. OFC support was removed from M05. (Incidentally, QIF support was removed from Q05.)
Once upon a time, Microsoft provided an Excel macro that wrote .QIF format files from Excel. Unfortunately, that macro is an old XLM style macro and Excel has not supported that type of macro for many versions now. Microsoft has never seen fit to issue any new capability like this. As of this writing, it appears that even the Knowledge Base article has been disappeared.
Having said that, it is worth noting that QIF is just a text file with a format that is not, apparently, all that complex. It should be reasonably straightforward for someone used to mucking around in VBA for Excel to write code to generate passable QIF files. The QIF file format is an ad hoc standard semi-documented by Quicken. The references, all identified from a search at google, may help you get there. There were many more references that were not included here and these references may not be good currently. If you create some code for this, please report back here and offer it up to the community.
One reader, Didier Lachièze, has done just that. Several readers have reported good results with Didier's macro. Didier has also developed a web page that provides resource links to other similar tools.
Another reader, Ron Rosenfeld, reported on a shareware CSV to QIF converter written by James Lavery of Monthtwo Systems. There has been no other feedback on this tool.
(These things must be really popular lately.) There's another one written by a guy named John. No user reports on it yet, either.
Chris Cowles reported yet another CSV to QIF converter--built to go with a personal finance manager application for Palm, the web site for which provides yet another spin on QIF documentation.
Colin Smales asked me to include a reference to his MT2OFX converter tool that provides conversions of a number of different formats to OFX.
References:
Another attempt to document QIF
Colin Smale's MT2OFX format conversion tool
CSV to QIF revisited
Didier Lachièze's Excel to QIF macro
Didier Lachièze's QIF conversion resource page
google.com
John's XL to QIF
Monthtwo Systems' CSV to QIF shareware
MSKB: Q077220 Excel to .QIF macro
QIF Apple-centric documentation, but maybe still valid
QIF documented by the GnuCash folks
QIF documented maybe a little less well
QIF documented yet again and app for Palm
QIF documented
Q) I've decided to convert from Money to Quicken. How do I do this?
A) Since Quicken has so much market share and Money so little, Intuit hasn't felt much need over the years to make it easy for Money users to switch to Quicken. Per Russ Paul-Jones, Quicken offered a converter to import Money M98 data files to the Q99 format. A poster going by the moniker of "CIS" pointed a new converter for M03 and earlier files to Q04. The Intuit notes on this tool indicate that, among other limitations, it doesn't convert loan accounts. That seems like a pretty serious limitation.
References:
Quicken Q04 Money file conversion utility
Please see this disclaimer if you are using Money 2005 or this comment if you are using Money 2006.
| ← Previous | Next → |
| Miscellaneous | Support Issues |
|
Last update: 10 December 2006 |
If this kind of stuff is important to you:
