unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ and A
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Q) How can I sort credits before debits in the register view?
A) You can't. But if you enter them in this order in the first place, this is how they will sort.
Q) I think this new version is terrible. How do I exercise the 30-day Money Back Guarantee?
A) Assuming that you are in the United States or Canada, call Microsoft Customer Service at (800) 426-9400. You will have to send the product back to them with additional information (like a receipt for purchase and the reason for return) and they will send you a check. Microsoft has a web page with more details on this process.
References:
Microsoft North American retail product returns
Refund Help Desk: 1-888-673-8624
Q) I've been reading this newsgroup and wondering: why is Money so full of bugs?
A) Looking at posts in this newsgroup should no more be used to infer the defect rate in Microsoft Money than a trip to an auto body shop should be used to infer the likelihood of automobile accidents.
People come here because they need help or because they are looking for different or better ways to do things. Many Money users (who may or may not have similar issues) never find their way here. Some of them may be having problems. Most of them are not.
You can reasonably expect that issues that are discussed here frequently may be issues for you as well.
Likewise, many posts here about crashes, data file problems, and installation issues reflect issues that are not common--many are not even rooted in Money--and you are unlikely to encounter them. (You may, however, encounter your own set of issues. As always, your mileage may vary.)
Many of us have used Money for many years and many versions and have learned to live with its characteristics and deal with the new set of cards the Money development team deals each fall.
Q) I've got a really neato feature idea. How do I get it to Microsoft?
A) You can submit product suggestions to MSwish or via the Money Registration/Feedback series of web pages, which seem endless but probably give them a better chance to get the item to the right place.
The corollary to this FAQ is: how come M[next] didn't incorporate the really neato feature I've always thought it should?
Prior to the release of M05, the answer to this question assumed that Microsoft was genuinely concerned with balancing the desires and requirements of the existing user community, identified through channels like MSwish and the newsgroup, with support costs, market share, market penetration and profitability.
Virtually no significant features that make Money a more capable or versatile product for personal financial management have been added to Money since M02--and about all it added was the ability to modify multiple occurrences of scheduled transactions. The bulk of the significant M05 redevelopment was geared to three things: Yodlee integration; the Essential modes that we are told, with no hint why we should believe it, "most users prefer"; and further blurring the distinction between Money as an application on your computer and Money as a web application and advertising delivery vehicle. The only aspect of this that has had any significant prior interest in the newsgroup is broader financial provider support for transaction download. Yodlee integration is Microsoft's attempt to address this. It's safe to say that very few newsgroup posters have asked for more ads.
The competition with Quicken and the relatively small market share relative to Quicken holds the price down. Microsoft makes very little if any money off a product retailing for $24. One support call and they're upside down. The bulk of their licensing revenue probably comes from the OEM licenses bundled with new computers anyway. (And the OEMs get those support calls.) Their only hope of making any profit from Money going forward probably requires three things: First, reducing the cost of sales and support. This explains the emphasis on download sales and dumbing the product down--and progressively migrating it toward being a web app--to reduce support costs. Second, "monetizing" the ongoing relationship so that a one time sale becomes an ongoing revenue stream to pay for even a little ongoing development, the services (like Yodlee and quotes) and support. This accounts for the focus on advertising delivery and tie-in marketing. (Examples include "Find great credit card deals," "Find cash for a car," and "Compare home equity loans" scattered all over the account registers plus all of the MSN web pages chock full of ads.) Finally, they need to convert more of the people who say they would use a home computer to manage their finances to actually doing something like that using "Microsoft Money". This probably explains the emphasis on "stop typing!" and "the effortless way". The people who are willing to go to any trouble at all to "manage their personal finances" using "Microsoft Money" probably already are.
As if this weren't depressing enough, consider the pace at which bugs in Money get fixed.
Given all of this, it doesn't seem that there is much incentive for Microsoft to care what existing Money users want the product to do nor have they released much evidence that they do. But go ahead and submit a suggestion. YMMV.
References:
Money Registration/Feedback
MSwish mail
Q) M97 (or earlier) stopped downloading quotes. What can I do about it?
[Relevant to Money v. 4, Money97 (v.5)]
A) Apparently your only recourse is to upgrade to a new version. Apparently this was an unintentional side effect of other things Microsoft was doing, but since M97 and earlier are no longer supported, they have no intention of fixing it. See the support lifecycle page for more information and the Microsoft Money home page for information about the current version. Thanks to Cal Learner and Bob Peel, both MVPs, for this information.
References:
Microsoft Money web site
Microsoft Support Lifecycle information
Q) What's this 'Savings & Spending Budget'? Where's the real budget tool?
[Relevant to Money2007 (v.16) and up]
A) Lots of people, apparently, found the long time Advanced Budget, née Budget Planner, budgeting method too hard or cumbersome or just not useful. Somewhere along the way, Richard Jenkins, an editor at the MSN Money website, "invented" a simpler one-size-fits-all solution that he called "the 60% solution". M07 incorporated this and calls it the "Savings & Spending Budget". Collectively, they seem very proud of it.
Perhaps it will work well for some people and if it does, more power to the 60% scheme, to Money for adding it, and to the users it works well for. It seems like a simplistic toy to me, but that's just me.
Where the new toy budget gets a little more complicated is that they hide the old Advanced Budget, née Budget Planner, tool from anyone who didn't have an Advanced Budget in their file pre-dating M07. But a crafty poster, Ronald Pierce, resorted to reading the help files and found out that there is a way to get to it by typing "money://navigate/newadvbgt" into the M07 URL text box. As Michael Gordon pointed out, this is finally a useful purpose for the URL text box. Perhaps a more strategic question is how long Money will continue to support the budget tool the developers seem intent on making disappear.
References:
MSN article that gave birth to the "Savings & Spending Budget"
Q) What's up with this expiration date for online services I read about in the EULA?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11) and up]
A) Many of us always figured there was an implicit date beyond which Microsoft was not going to provide services that cost them money to provide on legacy interfaces that cost them money to maintain in exchange for the same $10 we paid for the software way back when. Beginning with M03, Microsoft finally made this explicit by setting service periods and cutoff dates after which they won't provide these services. Further, these periods vary by the package licensed with the expensive packages getting support longer than the cheap ones. It makes some sense--who else ever agrees to provide a service to you forever for nothing more than you paid in the beginning?
M05 set the same service period without regard to the version. It also added Yodlee integration which probably does have marginal cost to Microsoft as a function of time. Microsoft is steadily moving Money away from an "application software licensed in perpetuity" business model to a "service subscription" model where the fees will be based on time used, regardless of version.
Mark Horn read this answer and correctly pointed out that it doesn't mention a more insidious aspect to this. Money's service cutoff also includes transaction data downloads direct from your financial institution to you. These downloads, provided they work and don't entail support costs or use protocols that Microsoft and the FIs would rather make disappear, cost Microsoft absolutely nothing. It's like Stanley Tools telling you that the hammer you bought from them will stop driving nails in two years. But there it is. What are you going to do?
Q) Why is my Money file so large?
[Relevant to Money98 (v.6) and up]
A) Money files have grown in size dramatically since early versions. The reasons for this are no doubt complex and numerous. Added functionality certainly accounts for some of this increase. Design choices accounts for some of this--in particular, the choice to use the Jet database instead of the custom ISAM, made with release of Money 98, increased file sizes by factors of three or more. (Certainly, those of us who follow this also continue to collect data each year.) Whether its storage is efficient or economical is beyond the scope of the newsgroup. We see no evidence that Microsoft considers compact Money data files a priority in the design process.
Archiving is one way to reduce file size. See "How do I un-archive?" for reasons not to do this. Some files imported from Quicken have been reported to be huge, though with use and the automatic compacting of the database, many of these shrink to more reasonable sizes.
Jet- and MSISAM-based versions of Money support periodic or as-required compacting of the database. Salvage (see "What is the -s option? What is the Super Salvage utility?") has been reported to help some cases of this.
The wide availability of huge hard disks and writeable CDs has reduced the significance of this problem over time.
(My Money 2004 file has had continuous data entry since March 1993, and has never had entries archived. As of November 2004, MoneyLink retrieves almost 34,000 transactions, i.e., splits, and almost 4,700 investment transactions from my M04 file. The file is 53.1 MB and backs up, compressed, on ten 1.44 MB floppies. Your mileage probably varies. As another point of reference, my data file is growing by about 550 KB per month. At this rate of growth, my data file will still fit on a 640MB writeable CD in the year 2092. The more immediate problem in this scenario is that the Excel row limitation will prevent retrieving all transactions with MoneyLink sometime in 2011.)
M07 added an interesting new "Repair Tool" that has significantly shrunk some files. One case went from 67.9MB to 54.8MB. Whether this reduction remains as the files is maintained going forward is not yet known. For details, see "Can you tell me more about the remarkable new Nuke-the-Bills miracle repair method?" for details.
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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