Microsoft Money - Auotmatically Updating Share Prices

Vortigern

Looks like Money2002 is working as before. Both shares and UTs updating daily. Thanks to all who supplied links to ft.com and hleOfxQuotes - we may need these again if Microsoft continues to mess with this product/service. Special thanks to LucianH for spotting that the service had resumed.

LucianH

Farway wrote: »

Which of course is why you must always untick the "Update money" box before you update share prices

.. and make sure you disable automatic updates via the options

Vortigern

It's stopped updating funds again since 31/03/11. Shares still OK.
MSN's uk.moneycentral.msn.com/investor/quotes/quotes.aspx?symbol=xxxxx website is still showing last Wednesday's closing prices. It seems that the website at moneycentral etc is at fault, rather than the MSMoney software.

viney

I have read through this thread and am a bit confused.

I have microsoft money version 11 and it too stopped updating the share price since 10/02/11.

However, I do not have a recent backup, my last one is from about 1 year ago and I have input considerable transactions since then.

Can I still get it to update the share price in the original way, without this seperate spreadsheet?

Thanks

LucianH

viney wrote: »

I have microsoft money version 11 and it too stopped updating the share price since 10/02/11.

However, I do not have a recent backup, my last one is from about 1 year ago and I have input considerable transactions since then.

Can I still get it to update the share price in the original way, without this seperate spreadsheet?

Thanks

Updates are still working (but for how long who knows) – both my shares and funds show update dates of 28/4/11.

It appears that the only thing that is stopping the updates is if Money does a "Money update" at which point Microsoft seem to set something in the data file that then prevents the updates. This can happen if you have the “Automatically update accounts when I start Money” setting in the Options (on V12 this in on the Online Services tab”). It will also happen if you do a manual update and leave the “Get latest money updates” ticked (I covered this in my post on 19-02-2011, 9:42 AM).

I suggest you try the following things to see if you could get the on-line stuff working:

1) Make a copy of your previous backup file (the one that’s about a year old) – just in case you accidentally overwrite it.

2) Ensure that you disable the “Automatically update…” option.

3) Take a new backup of your current file (give it a different name as the previous backup file)

4) Restore from the old backup

5) Try manually doing an update ensuring that you untick the “Get latest money updates”

If this then successfully updates the share price, you know you’re onto a winner. However, you’ll have to restore all the account transactions that have occurred over the last year. There is a way you could do this using the Export/Import functions (anybody else who knows of a better way of doing this, then please chip in with a better solution):

6) Make a note of the last transactions in the account(s)

7) Restore from the backup you made in (3) above. (And make a note of the balance of the account(s))

8) Export the data in the account(s) using the “File>Export..” menu and select “Loose QIF” (assuming it’s the same as V12). This produces a text file with a “.QIF” extension.

9) Open the QIF file(s) in Notepad and you’ll see a fairly easy to understand format (apologies if I’m teaching you how to suck eggs). It’ll have about 6 lines followed by a “^” on a single line. All the transactions are then listed (even split ones) with them each separated with a “^” line. You’ll see that each transaction starts with the date (preceded with a “D”). Carefully delete all transactions lines up to and including the transaction you noted in (6) above. An example of a QIF file is:

!Type:Bank – Shows account as either bank or credit card
D01/04/1999

---

}
T3,289.10

---

}
CX

---

} Header stuff
POpening Balance }
L[Account Name] -}
^ - Start/end marker
D01/04/2009 - Date of first transaction
MComment or Memo here
T83.00 - amount
PPayee goes here
LCategory:SubCategory
^
:
etc
:

^
D01/04/2011 - Date of last transaction
MTGas Direct Debit
T-80.62
PThe OffRip Gas Co
LBills:Gas
^ - Final Marker

10) Once you’ve edited the QIF file(s), restore again from the old backup as you did in (4) and then import the data in the QIF file(s) using the “File>Import..” menu and select the “As a new or recovered account” which will then allow you to select the account that the QIF file relates to.

You’ll then have to check that you have the right balance(s). It’ll be unlikely first cut if you have many accounts since it’ll probably duplicate transactions where money is transferred between accounts – so you’ll have to do a lot of checking but it will save you having to re-enter everything (I didn’t say it’ll be easy!).

One last thing – I haven’t tried this with investment accounts so I do not know how this will handle those (or what a QIF file looks like for those). So you’ll have to review how many investment transactions you’ll have to re-enter – You’ll also loose share price history for the period between the date of the old backup and when you do the next update.

LucianH

viney - Have you tried doing what I suggested above? It'll be interesting to know if it works and might help others.

Apparition

I have accidentally found a work round theproblem of Money not updating automatically. Before opening Money change you systemb date to a date before the change in software - I have been dropping the date back to 2009. Then open and sign onto Money. Then before going to Portfolio change your system date back to today's date. When you go to Portfolio and click on the update tab you will find that Update Prices On-line magically reappears and more to the point works. The only trouble is you have to go through the date change thing everytime you want to update prices but at least it means your old system continues to work
Happy Investing!

BGAksai

Stock Quotes are still working for me in UK MS Money 2005 (v14) every 20 minutes or when clicking on Portfolio but I get the error message if I manually select 'Update Prices Now.

For anyone trying to find the 'msnsq.exe' add in for Excel to download stock quotes from the web, it is still available at
//am.net/lib/TOOLS/Microsoft/Office
and search for msnsq.exe. (Sorry, as a new member, I am not permitted to post the full link)

I'm using on Excel 2007 and tried it OK on Excel 2010.

LucianH

Apparition wrote: »

I have accidentally found a work round theproblem of Money not updating automatically. Before opening Money change you systemb date to a date before the change in software - I have been dropping the date back to 2009. Then open and sign onto Money. Then before going to Portfolio change your system date back to today's date. When you go to Portfolio and click on the update tab you will find that Update Prices On-line magically reappears and more to the point works. The only trouble is you have to go through the date change thing everytime you want to update prices but at least it means your old system continues to work
Happy Investing!

As BGAksai says, Money updates are still working for me (V12). As said earlier in this thread, the thing that appears to stop it is if you have the "Get latest Money updates" selected in which case it appears that our friendly Microsoft sets some sort of flag in your Money file which then stops further updates from working. Hence, as long as you have a "non-MS-figged-with" file, you disable the automatic updating, only do manual updates AND ensure that you untick the "Get latest Money updates" everything is still OK.

Apparition: I assume your work-around works with a Money file that that has previously stopped being updated. If it is this may well help others.