Optimising MS Money file

kopicbloodaxe

Hi all,

My problem is that over the years my Money file has become rather large and is now probably very full of black holes where data has been deleted, archived, etc.

Entering data into Money now takes for ever so I was wondering if anyone knows anything about optimising the data file to a) make it more efficient, i.e. faster; and b) make it smaller.

I use Money 2003, by the way.

Many thanks for any help!

--Simon.

Seamus

I am currently on MS Money 2002 and it performs very quickly even though it has 7 years of banking, credit card, stock and shares transactions in it (from previous upgraded versions of Money).

If it really is the size of your file that is causing the performance problem then you could try exporting the data from Money, creating a new money file and importing the data again. This will ensure it is as clean as possible.

There is a Microsoft KB article describing this process that might help you : http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q178830

kopicbloodaxe

Thanks for the reply. I already tried the export and import options but ended up with a total mess!  :o

I don't think it's the file size that is the option, per se. I use the same money file on my home PC with more memory and less apps running than on my work PC with less memory and tons of crud running. It works reasonably on my home PC but is a lot slower at work. I put this down to lack of performance processing the file with lots of holes in it. The file itself won't be fragmented but its internal data structures probably have a lot of wasted space.

Let me explain a little further what I see. At work (where I do most of my accounts) I hit the enter key in my Bills and Transactions list to enter a bill... I wait 30 seconds for the dialog box... hit enter... wait another 30s for the transaction to be entered and then I'm back to the list.

At home, it's still slower than I would expect but a little quicker than at work.

Both PCs are Compaqs the work one has a P4 1.7GHz and 256MB RAM and the home PC has an AMD Athlon 2100+ (a 1.7GHz CPU) and 768MB RAM.

Can it really be as simple as a difference in the amount of memory?

My data file is approx 6.5Mb and when compressed for backup it is approx 1.5Mb

Appreciate all thoughts on this subject. Really want to get to the bottom of this!

I don't really want the answer to be upgrade your PC to compensate for poor application/data performance!!!  ::)

--Simon.

Seamus

Found the following article on MS KB that details a utility that "compacts the data file and checks the integrity of certain stored information".

Might be worth a try. There's also reference to another article specifically on Money 2003.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182608

I did a quick google on slow money performance and there were quite a lot of hits. The following had some interesting (depressing) information on money performance. http://www.bollar.org/msmoney/