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 payee

Currency-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 subclassifications

Note 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.

Please see this disclaimer if you are using Money 2005 or this comment if you are using Money 2006.

If this kind of stuff is important to you: