Monday, April 17, 2006

And two more....

A new article added yesterday, and another today.

Firstly, changing the credit limit for credit cards in Microsoft Money Standard 2005 and 2006. Bizarrely, this is not possible in Money standard, although this article explains a workaround to do it (changing the account type).

Secondly, adding a new account when the financial insitution name is missing. A really simple solution - use the Skip option - it doesn't mean that you can't download transactions from your bank. I have seen a number of people asking about this one.

The volume of new articles is going down. I have some more waiting to be written, but I'll be taking a rest from adding to the site for a few weeks, so don't expect anything new for a little while.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Find (Search) and Replace in Money

Find and replace in Microsoft Money is pretty powerful. The tool gives the ability to fine tune searching to various criteria - be they categories, payees, dates, types or combinations of these.

There are two types of search in Money - a simple search and an advanced search. Both end up at the same screens eventually, although the latter allows this fine tuning.

In this article - Find (Search) and Replace in Money, there is a quick run through of some of the windows and some of the options that are available.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Another couple of new articles

Another couple of articles from my list of articles to add, which I have got around to today.

Firstly, a short walkthrough of setting up a frequent flyer account. I remember when these were first introduced in Microsoft MOney. They didn't go down too well as people thought that Microsoft were putting new 'unneeded' features in Money, without fixing the problems in the program.

However, they remain in the program. I use them as well, but it's not something essential i need - just use it for the convenience.

The second article is one on installing Microsoft Money more than once. The license agreement in most versions of Microsoft Money is very similar, so it's just an article to reference the license and show an example one.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Microsoft Money Backups

Microsoft Money can go wrong at any point. It can happen to anyone.

Even with the tight control I try to have on my file, I once again needed to rely on my backup mechanism for Microsoft Money (i use the UK 2005 version).

On starting the Money file, the CPU went to 100% and stayed there. Money can be slow at times, but after 15 CPU minutes of it, I decided that this definitely was a problem with the file.

A quick repair, then the standard repair didn't seem to make much difference (apart from making the file a lot bigger - nothing too unusual). Time to go back to backups.

Fortunately, the mechanism I use meant I had a set of backups I could use. Once I identified that there was a possible problem, I usually take a copy of the backup file, so I can always use it again, and it won't get overwritten. In any case, I had others to use.

Restoring the backup seemed to fix the problem, and there was little data to add to the file (one transaction). I did notice a side effect, and this was with the data on my Pocket PC. When restoring the file, the account balance of a particular account then went out of sync. Fortunately following my own advice (FAQ Article 180) sorted this issue out.

All is now fine. I don't expect it will be the last time though :-(

Monday, April 03, 2006

Sorting the check register

Two articles yesterday:
  1. Sorting the check register
  2. MSN UK Money Update 19th January 2006
The first one is relevant to virtually all versions of Microsoft Money. In some versions, it is not intuitive to discover how to sort the register, and sometimes people have sorted it accidentally, and not known how to 'unsort' (well, 'resort') it back to the original way it was sorted.

The second article is more for posterity, as the problem is now fixed. However, some users are still seeing the issue. It does show how much MSN Money and Microsoft Money are interlinked, when the navigation is damaged by an online update.

Unfortuately, the problem with the navigation did take a while to fix - hopefully Microsoft will remember to get that working before making changes live in future.