My Microsoft Money has stopped getting prices online

SteveC67

It may be possible to reverse engineer the web server that provides the quote service, then change the URL to a replacement service that links to ft.com (or anywhere else).

I had a quick look at the messages sent to the quote server using Wireshark and can see the symbol list being sent to the quote server, but there's a *lot* of other raw data in the request and responses that needs decoding.

After a quick look, it also appears that any new symbols added invoke a download of historical weekly price data.

Based on what I can see, this is a huge task. I have no idea if any part of the data or quotes are encrypted, nor of the format.

droopsnoot

SteveC67 wrote: »

Based on what I can see, this is a huge task. I have no idea if any part of the data or quotes are encrypted, nor of the format.

That's exactly the problem - it would need a combination of people who (a) know how to decode stuff like that, and (b) use the feature enough to devote the time to it. I would think that if you can 'see' the symbols in the transfer, they're probably not encoded. But maybe that's why the service no longer works, with the current obsession for data security - perhaps the site operators now only offer than data in encrypted format for whatever applications they do still support.

And, of course, while you can see what is sent to the server from Money, you now don't have a way to see what the server would have sent back, so very difficult to figure out how to respond to it. As it's a separate DLL, perhaps it might be easier to replace it with one that queries elsewhere and (somehow) shoe-horns it back into the Money data file. But without information on that format, probably also very difficult.

SteveC67

droopsnoot wrote: »

That's exactly the problem - it would need a combination of people who (a) know how to decode stuff like that, and (b) use the feature enough to devote the time to it. I would think that if you can 'see' the symbols in the transfer, they're probably not encoded. But maybe that's why the service no longer works, with the current obsession for data security - perhaps the site operators now only offer than data in encrypted format for whatever applications they do still support.

And, of course, while you can see what is sent to the server from Money, you now don't have a way to see what the server would have sent back, so very difficult to figure out how to respond to it. As it's a separate DLL, perhaps it might be easier to replace it with one that queries elsewhere and (somehow) shoe-horns it back into the Money data file. But without information on that format, probably also very difficult.

I still see a response from the quote server - a TCP stream, however, it appears that the quote data it is returning for shares is just out of date. Apart from the symbol names being listed as"/GB:BARC," etc, the rest of the data isn't obvious.

I have reverse engineered a proprietary ftp protocol in the past running concurrently over 30 ISDN channels so have had some experience in this area, however, it did take around 3-4 months full time with a protocol analyser and a lot of head scratching ... Oh, AND I was getting paid contract rates for it

If I had nothing better to do, it'd be an interesting challenge! 90% of the effort will be decoding the protocol - from the HTTP query to the TCP stream returned. Once that's understood, it would be relatively easy to create the same format after querying (say ft.com) for quotes.

droopsnoot

PM sent to you earlier on this.

MadLoopy

This is all very interesting but unit trusts are still updating ok. It really probably is a tweak or something. I am wondering if the US version of MS money 2008 would auto update prices??

planter02_2

Microsoft Money hav turned off on July 1st 2013 the servers that provided live share updates and although there are some clever remedies none are simple. There are no comparable programs to money that I can find. The banking side works fine to manually download statements but portfolio management is very difficult unless you update share prices manually. This is time consuming but effective although I have yet to try it. Anyone with a patch to sort the program out could make some decent money.

robinsh

Has anybody asked Microsoft why Money has stopped updating - and what they might do to help us?

canary2211

Whilst we are on the subject, I wonder if anyone might have a good way to record regular monthly savings into a small portfolio of funds (in MS Money 2005). Presently I have just ordinary Asset Accounts set up and then update values manually from my broker's summaries.

But I then run a separate Excel to review long term rates of return etc. MS Money doesnt seem to be able to do that?

Perhaps I want something that MS Money cant do: but I would be interested to hear what other users do. The end of online price updates is a shame - but I didnt really use them so I won't miss them!!!

Vortigern

No longer updating UT/OEIC prices. Last update was 20 August.
I wonder if Microsoft will find some way to disable its other features and stop it working offline?

brewerdave

I'm still using MS Money 99 on my Vista PC to reconcile current accounts and keep an account manually of my (few) shareholdings. Was going to buy a new PC running either Windows 7 or 8 til I read that neither will support MSM 99!!
Just praying that the existing machine will keep going til I can find a simple & cheap (preferably free!)alternative to the MS programme.