MSN Money February Site Update

When: February 25, 2008

The MSN Money February site update includes the following:

• No longer downloading Pending transactions (as of Feb 20).
• A chance to Preview of the upcoming replacement for the Basic Portfolio
• Switching to using EdgarOnline for SEC filings reports
• Some general performance and data quality improvements

Reference the What's new page for additional information after the site has updated.

Money Plus Essentials in Canada

The 'Essentials' version of Money is now available in Canada. This is the 'online-only' version which is quite basic.

Money Essentials is for new Money customers only as it will not be able to open other Money product files or Quicken Files, so it is of limited use to people using previous versions.

So unless you really want the essentials version (If you want to download your data and start afresh), I'd recommend going for a more featured version such as Premium or Deluxe.

If you want to get hold of Money Plus outside the US, see my previous posting. (that post doesn't include a link to Microsoft Money Essentials)

The microsoft site prices Essentials at approximately $19.99 Canadian Dollars

Obtaining Money Plus outside the US or Japan

I've been a little busy recently, and so my posting to the newsgroups, web site and this blog has been, well, a bit intermittent. I can't promise this will include in the short/medium term.

With the continuing lack of information on UK, Canadian, French and other versions of Microsoft Money, it's becoming increasingly more likely that these markets are no longer being targetted by Microsoft. We'll need to see over the next months whether that is again the case for a 2009 (Plus+ or whatever name they use) product.

In the meantime, some people are trying out the Plus product by downloading the trial. Unfortunately this presents a problem when they come to purchase the product from outside the US. Places such as amazon.com do not ship the software outside of the US.

To get around this restriction, you can use a digital download instead. The 'trick' is to use a 'fake' US address. Obviously you need to avoid the purchase of a CD media here.

You can obtain the various versions of Money through digital download through one of the following links:

• Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe
• Microsoft Money Plus Premium
• Microsoft Money Plus Home & Business

These links are no longer valid

Update: 5 February - you can't directly update a non-US money file (e.g. UK, France) directly into Money Plus (except possibly the Canadian one).

I've not gone through the process above, so would be happy to hear experiences.