Importing from MS Money not so easy
Jennifer
via web
I have read (and re-read) the instructions on how to import files from MS Money to MD. It specifically says to open the file I want to export. It then says to name the account I want to export. The problem is that Money data file is not set up with specific accounts. My Money file is one big file that contains all of my accounts. In other words, I cannot pick my American Express or my checking account file to export specifically, however when exporting the entire Money file, I am forced to pick an account (i.e. American Express) on the MD side. So when I import the data all of my Money accounts come over (even the closed ones that say will not come over?) and the balances are so wacky and nowhere near correct. What am I doing wrong? How do I export specific Money accounts and not the entire file?
2 Posted by -Kevin N. on 22 Aug, 2010 10:59 PM
Hi Jennifer,
You are correct, it is not easy, mainly due to how MS Money chooses to export it's data.
I'll try to walk you through the export process.
First, access your MS Money file. Re-open any closed acccounts.
Go to the Account List by clicking the Banking tab.
A good idea now would be to write down each account name listed so you can check them off as you export them.
From the File menu, choose Export... Choose Loose QIF, click OK.
In the next window, in the Save in: drop down box, select a place to save all of the QIF files you are about to create.
In the same window, disregard what is already entered in the File name: box and change it to the name of the first account in the list of accounts you created earlier, then click OK.
In the next form, choose what type of account you are exporting, either Bank or Investment. Click OK.
In the next window, match the account to the account name that you entered earlier in the File name: box. Click Continue. You should get a confirmation that the export is complete.
Look in the folder that you chose to save the QIF files into to make sure the file was indeed created. Then check it off of your list of Accounts.
Repeat this for each of your Regular accounts.
For your Investment accounts you have to perform the export as two seperate acccounts. One for the securities transactions and one for the cash transactions.
Just follow the same directions above.
When your exporting your investment account choose Investment as the export type.
When your exporting the Cash portion of the account, name it the same as the Investment account with Cash appended to it. Such as Fidelity_Cash but choose Bank as the export type.
Repeat this process for each of your Investment accounts.
Once you've created all of your QIF files, you can follow the instructions in the Moneydance Knowledge base item to start importing each QIF file:
http://help.infinitekind.com/faqs/importing-from-quicken-or-ms-mone...
Don't be alarmed if when you import a QIF file for one account and it populates other accounts. This is normal. It represents transfers between the accounts.
You should expect some balance differences. These can be corrected by setting the initial balance for each account.
I hope this gets you started in the right direction.
Post back if you need more help.
HTH -Kevin N.
3 Posted by Jennifer on 24 Aug, 2010 03:00 AM
Hi Kevin. Thanks - I've successfully imported my accounts.
How do I now combine my cash and investment accounts into one each?
Once they are combined do I simply delete the cash account?
Also, I had to import my closed accounts from Money, but I don't want to have them in my MD list. Is there a way to close them? I'm afraid if I delete them it will screw up other accounts that had transactions linked to these closed accounts.
And finally, is it really true that I can't import my home mortgage account? In the user guide it says it's not possible, but a few paragraphs later it says to set them up and import them. Don't get that? It's important that I track my principal and interest payments.
4 Posted by -Kevin N. on 24 Aug, 2010 02:18 PM
Hi Jennifer,
Glad to hear that things are coming together for you.
First things first make a current backup of your data file.
To combine the Cash portion of your investment account into the transactions porttion requires what is called a 'Batch Change'
To perform this access the Cash account. Select (Highlight) the first txn in the register,
hold down the Shift key and select the last txn in the register. You should now have all txn's selected. Right click any one of the txns and choose 'Batch Change' then 'Account'
In the resulting form, click the little double arrows. From the drop down box choose the associated investment account. Make certain to choose the proper account. Click OK.
That should move all of the Cash txns to the associated Investment account.
You can then delete the Cash account.
As for the closed accounts... Dont delete them. You can't close them like you could in MS Money but you can sort of hide them. To do so access each closed account, then from the Menu bar, click on 'Account' then 'Edit Account...' Put a check mark next to 'Hide on Home Page (If Balance is Zero)
You can remove any accounts that you don't want to appear on the side bar by clicking the (-) minus sign under the side bar. This does not delete the account, it just hides it.
As for your mortgage account... I'm affraid that I have no experience with holding a mortgage or tracking it in Moneydance. Hopefully one of the Moneydance Support Staff can assist you in that area.
Again make sure you have a backup before you make any major changes to your data file.
HTH -Kevin N.
5 Posted by Greg on 29 Aug, 2010 07:02 PM
Are you telling me in additon to all the "bank" and "investment" qifs you have to create, you then have to go back and enter all ticker symbols as well for any investment account from MS Money? Moneydance won't bring in the tickers? That's a ton of work.
6 Posted by -Kevin N. on 29 Aug, 2010 09:53 PM
Hi Greg,
You are correct. You need to enter the ticker for each security. The good news... it's a one time thing.
After that add the Yahoo Stock Quotes extention. Extentions > Add > From the Internet radio button. This will add the Stock Quote Syncronizer to the Extentions menu. Click it to update prices.
IMHO all the work is worth it to be rid of MS Money. I think you'll find that the more you use MD the more you'll like it.
HTH -Kevin
7 Posted by Greg on 29 Aug, 2010 10:39 PM
Sorry, Kevin, I spent 3 hrs working in MoneyDance today with qif files and what not done. Downloaded Quicken and it did all the work for me. Which would you choose?
8 Posted by -Kevin N. on 29 Aug, 2010 11:26 PM
Hi Greg,
By not providing a means for the user to export their entire file as one .QIF file, I think that the difficulty is more MS Money's fault than Moneydance's.
You already know which I chose. ;}
-Kevin N.
9 Posted by Greg on 30 Aug, 2010 12:04 AM
I hear you on that the export capabilty as I am a IT programmer for a large company, but Quicken imports the whole .mny file with all the tickers, all accounts; investment and cash. I agree MoneyDance looked good, but I don't have 8 hrs to do all the work with the two products only differing by $12 in price ($49.99 vs Amazon Quicken download price of $61.99). One simple import saves me money because my time is money.
10 Posted by zubalea on 30 Aug, 2010 08:24 AM
Hi Greg,
It is actually more that $12. There is one thing about the Quicken price you should know. It is not for the purchase of the software, it is really a rental. Intuit (Quicken) will disable your online services I believe every 3 years. Search google and you will see many unhappy Intuit customers. I had the canadian deluxe version which basically cost me $120. This equates to be $40 per year. I was so unhappy the morning I started to download my bank data to Quicken and it would not let me do it because my software had expired. Forcing a paid upgrade on clients is wrong.
That is the day I tried 101 different finance tracking application. Moneydance won. After getting through the learning curve, I am extremely happy with this product. For me, I can now reconcile my data in 1/2 the time it used to take me with Quicken. The quick filter and search buttons are very useful.
I understand your frustration about the time. I hope it works out for you.
Mike
Support Staff 11 Posted by Ben Spencer on 30 Aug, 2010 03:16 PM
Sadly the .mny file is a proprietary file format. Quicken entered into an arrangement with Microsoft (I imagine an expensive one) that provided them with the specifications of the format. There has been some discussion with Microsoft about making the format of the .mny file publicly available and the Microsoft representative after deliberating for a few days flatly refused.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/os_binaryfile/thread/...
Without those specification all we have is the QIF files to work with and they are far from perfect. I am sorry this process if proving time consuming. I can well imagine this is frustrating.
sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
12 Posted by Dave on 03 Sep, 2010 02:43 PM
I'm in the same boat as Greg ... my MS Money file is big with a lot of accounts and I just don't have time to do this manually ... I understand the proprietary file format issue but was wondering, if I switch to Quicken short term, can MD import directly from Quicken later?
13 Posted by -Kevin N. on 03 Sep, 2010 03:29 PM
Hi Dave,
From what I've read, there are versions of Quicken that allow the user to export their entire data file as one .qif file.
I don't know if this holds true for the latest ilk though. The way I understand it is that Quicken has abandoned the .qif file format in their more recent versions but I don't know if that also pertains to their export process.
If you can't get an answer here, I would ask over at the Quicken forums.
HTH -Kevin N.
Support Staff 14 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 04 Sep, 2010 03:22 AM
Dave,
Everything Kevin said is correct. I believe that it is still possible to export full data files in the qif format from Quicken, but I'm not 100% sure about that. If you try it I'd love to hear how the process goes for you, and I'm sorry we don't have a more streamlined solution for you.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
15 Posted by Dave on 04 Sep, 2010 03:35 PM
thanks for the input ... if I have the time to try this entire sequence I'll let everyone know how it works out
16 Posted by sandstones on 11 Sep, 2010 07:40 PM
to the Moneydance folks...
It certainly would be possible to convert the bulk of the Money data. There was a Money Newsgroup discussion about a year ago that gave info on how to turn a Money file into an easily read Access database. Taken from that post.
To convert to Access
1.Do Binary replace in the MNY file (very close to top)
replace "MSISAM Database" with "Standard Jet DB"
2. Rename file from xx.mny to xx.mdb
3. Use AccessFIX tool to repair the MDB file.
4. Use Acces to query TRN and TRN_INVOICE tables as needed.
I tried that and it worked! Very easy, the only thing you need to have is AccessFiX, which I do.
Support Staff 17 Posted by Ben Spencer on 11 Sep, 2010 08:22 PM
Do you happen to know if the free demo of AccessFix is sufficient for the task. The full version is $300USD. That seems a bit steep.
Ben
18 Posted by scott_davis on 09 Jan, 2011 05:55 PM
I’m about to move from MS Money to Moneydance. It seems that a cleaner way to make the conversion would be to export from Money to Quicken and then export from Quicken to Moneydance. I’m certainly willing to buy the latest version of Quicken to do this, on the assumption that I will save lots of time and aggravation. I also suspect that I will keep more of my data this way.
Does this make sense? Am I missing something?
19 Posted by Greg2 on 10 Jan, 2011 04:01 AM
Quicken is easy to convert from MS Money, Moneydance takes time.
----- Original Message -----
From: "sgdavis"
<***@tenderapp.com>
To: <***@comcast.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 12:55 PM
Subject: Re: Importing from MS Money not so easy [Switching to Moneydance
from Microsoft Money?]
20 Posted by scott_davis on 10 Jan, 2011 01:51 PM
Thanks, but my question really has to do with whether it's easier to convert to Moneydance from Quicken than from MS Money.
Support Staff 21 Posted by Ben Spencer on 11 Jan, 2011 07:08 PM
I think your suggested process does make sense and I can see no problem with it. I believe Quicken also have a 60 day refund policy.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
22 Posted by scott_davis on 13 Jan, 2011 08:57 PM
Here's a progress report. I purchased Quicken 2011 Deluxe - only $19.99 plus tax at Costco, since there's a $20-off coupon this month. I installed it and imported from Money [I'm running Money Plus Deluxe]. The import went smoothly, despite the 215 pages of "error" log; this was mostly warnings of text strings truncated to 40 characters. I then exported all accounts to a single .QIF file and imported to Moneydance. Unlike my experience of exporting individual Money accounts to .QIF files and importing them to Moneydance, the import from the single Quicken file went very smoothly, correctly creating bank, credit card, and investment accounts. [From Money, I ended up with everything as a bank account, though I may have made a procedural error.]
There were some anomalies, such as bogus account entries I had to delete, and I entered a couple of phony transactions to fix up investment account cash balances, but everything is looking pretty reasonable. I'll be running Money and Moneydance in parallel, while I learn the ropes.
Support Staff 23 Posted by Ben Spencer on 13 Jan, 2011 09:08 PM
You can change the cash balance on an investment account by going into the register and selecting Account->Edit account. Then set the initial balance from there.
Ben Spencer
24 Posted by scott_davis on 13 Jan, 2011 09:25 PM
Thanks. It wasn't so much initial balances as duplicated txns, probably from my own mistakes.
- Scott
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Spencer [mailto:***@tenderapp.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 2:09 PM
To: ***@post.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: Importing from MS Money not so easy [Switching to Moneydance from Microsoft Money?]
25 Posted by Francois on 13 Jan, 2011 09:42 PM
AceMoney has its own way of importing XML files from MSMoney report to their software. The process ran pretty well. No ticker import thought.
We have to create one XML bank accounts report (one report for all accounts you want/all dates) and another xml report with all the investment accounts. 2 files to creat/import. No account creation etc etc. it ran pretty smooth.
I've choosen MD because of a better set of reports ans tracking, wich is the purpose of managing accounts for me.
Here is the procedure: (also found on AceMoney website / User Manual)
How to convert data with XML report files
Create Account transactions report in Microsoft Money
Launch Microsoft Money.
Create an Account Transactions Report:
Money 2005 – 2008 (including Money Plus and Sunset Edition)
Click on the Reports tab.
Select Account transactions in the Income and expenses section.
If the report does not show up, select Change report settings in the Other tasks list. Then choose Switch from Essential Reports to Advanced Reports and click Use Advanced Reports.
Money 2003 – 2004
Select the Reports menu and select Reports Gallery.
In the Pick a report or chart list, select Account Transactions.
Click the Go to Report/Chart button.
In the Common tasks list on the left side, select Customize. Click the Reset button (skip this step if you don't see one). Click Yes to any confirmation message(s), the dialog will close. Now click on the Customize link again.
On the Rows & Columns tab, in the Include fields area, select the Memo, Account, Cleared status and Category options. Please make sure all the options mentioned above are selected, if any of these attributes are missing, import will fail.
In the Subtotal by field, select Accounts.
Select the Show splits checkbox.
Switch to the Account tab and click on the Select All button to include all your accounts to the report.
Switch to the Date tab, select All dates in the Range field. Now you can click OK to close the Customize Report dialog.
Select the Send to menu and select Desktop. This step may take several minutes depending on number of accounts and transactions.
26 Posted by zach on 06 Feb, 2011 02:50 PM
That's probably why I'll choose Acemoney over Moneydance. It is much easy to do the Money report export and then import EVERYTHING into Acemoney. The QIF import is a total pain in the butt since you have to do a separate QIF export/import for every single account (including obsolete ones that may have had transactions with active accounts.) This is hours of work. Even paying for Quicken every three years may be more cost effective when considering the time to transfer everything over. I think that Moneydance really needs to think this issue over a bit more, especially considering the $50 price tag.
27 Posted by scott_davis on 06 Feb, 2011 06:34 PM
As far as I can tell, neither Quicken (Deluxe) nor Acemoney runs on a Mac, which is one of my requirements. Since MS has pulled the plug on Money, I no longer have any real reason to stay on a Windows PC for my next machine.
-----Original Message-----
From: zach [mailto:***@tenderapp.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2011 7:51 AM
To: ***@post.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: Importing from MS Money not so easy [Switching to Moneydance from Microsoft Money?]
28 Posted by Paul Barton on 28 Jun, 2011 07:31 AM
RE AceMoney on a Mac. I am running it on a Macbook with no problem so far. I have Parallels installed, and Ace tells you on its website that it runs as an emulation, not a native.
My problem is converting my .mny file (from Money 2001) on my PC into a .xml file to import to AceMoney on my Mac. Sunset upgrade from MS didn't help. Ace will do the conversion for me for US$100. Any other suggestions please?
29 Posted by hleofxquotes on 19 Aug, 2011 10:04 PM
Regarding opening *.mny, see: http://sunriise.sourceforge.net/
Maybe with a "free license" of MoneyDance ;-) (so i can test the import) and some documentation on MoneyDance file format, I can help create an "better" *.mny exporter.
***@gmail.com
30 Posted by hleofxquotes on 17 Sep, 2011 03:19 PM
Progress report: on using runriise to help facilitate getting Money data into MD.
I can parse and display:
. list of account (both open and close)
. account's transaction with
. categories
. payees
. running balance and ending balance
. transfer between accounts
. split transactions are there (I know about them) but I am not showing them right now.
I am looking next into investment transactions, scheduled bills, classification.
If you are Money user and are thinking on making a switch, I could use your help with testing:
. see if the tool can open your money fie and show the correct data such as ending balance.
. give feedback on any missing functionality
See: https://sourceforge.net/projects/sunriise/forums/forum/1386861/topic/4677235/index/page/1
Best,