Problems with repeated requests to update Money Plus

Over the last week, since the Money Plus SP1 update was released through smartconnect, there have been a small group of people whose computers will not properly update themselves with this patch.

Microsoft have been looking into this issue, and some ideas have been floated through newsgroups on how to solve this.

I've put together a couple of articles about this, which might help you get around the problem should it be happening to you. Unfortunately they're not all that straightforward...

1. FAQ Article 547 - this is a collection of a number of suggested solutions
2. FAQ Article 549 - a specific fix for CD installations only

If you're experiencing the problem, hopefully something in one of those articles will help you.

PC Pro reports on the ditching of support for UK Money 2005

ON the PC Pro website, there is an article about the ditching of support for Money 2005.

Microsoft has dropped support for Money 2005 and described it as "obsolete" - even though the company claims it's still good enough for UK users.
In our online banking feature in this month's PC Pro we described "Money as a little unloved at Microsoft" after the company failed to issue a new UK version in three years, despite a US release just last year.

Some points to raise regarding this article:

• It is still possible to buy Money 2005 from Amazon.co.uk
• The product lifecycle (referenced in this article), puts the end of life for Money 2005 at 8 January 2008. This might be where the article is coming from as Microsoft probably use this date in the UK also. I blogged this back in January (End of Support for Money 2005).
• Online services relating to download (see Article 306) originally expired on 1 September 2007. However, the MSN Money website showed a new date of 31 December 2009. The page is still active.
• If all else looks lost, you can get hold of US versions in the UK by digital download (see this article).

Money Plus SP1 Released

Money Plus SP1 was released via smartconnect, on March 24, 2008. This update contains the following fixes:

• Resolves a conflict with the DEP setting in Windows Vista and in some versions of Windows XP. This conflict caused Money Plus to crash (FAQ Article 512).
• Money Plus Activation now accepts all characters if Windows is set to use Large Fonts (FAQ Article 533).
• Activation improvements for firewall and proxy configurations are included.
• Activation improvements for non-administrator configurations are included.
• Performance is improved when you work with Money Plus data files that contain many "unaccepted transactions."
• Other fixes to improve compatibility with Windows Vista are included.

Preview of Ultrasoft Money 1.0.2 for Windows Mobile

Posted onto the Ultrasoft Newsgroup/Forum:

A preview copy of Ultrasoft Money 1.0.2 for Windows Mobile is available here:

It includes the following: -

- Added support for non-English characters.
- Enabled access to Ultrasoft Money settings from ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center.
- Worked around the 0x8007000e error with 'Windows Vista and Microsoft Money 2002, 2003 and 2004.' (http://support.ultrasoft.com/faq.asp?id=171)
- Attempts to eliminate the "unresolved items" error sometimes displayed by ActiveSync. (Click here) for more information.

Only the issues listed above are addressed in this update.

UK Money site now offline

This probably happened a while back ;-) but the UK Money site¹ is no longer functioning. This site used to contain information about the UK product, but hasn't really been updated since Money 2005 was released back in 2004.

The MSN Money site also no longer lists the product directly from its homepage, although by digging around, you can still find the old pages referenced (the welcome page can be found here).
It is possible that Microsoft are decommissioning these pages - which could mean that 2005 is the last version for the UK (given the lack of anything in recent years, then this is a possibility - although I don't know!).

Assuming this is the case, I have made a safe copy of the Financial Institutions page, which may be handy at some stage for my main website.

So, what do you do if you want to upgrade to a US version (it's not straightforward)? You'll need to try out the US version (trial page) and worry about file conversion (QIF Export/Import) and then get hold of the real US version through digital download.

¹ Previously http://www.microsoft.com/uk/homepc/money