Money File Conversion

This topic describes problems and solutions converting between different versions of Microsoft Money.

Background

Microsoft Money has used a version of the Jet 3.5 database engine for many years to store a user's financial information in a so-called "Money File." Microsoft Jet 3.5 is a legacy version of the Jet database. A Jet database uses one file to database tables which includes queries, relationships, forms, and other metadata. The file format is slightly obfuscated to prevent opening your data using the standard Windows database drivers. There is no apparent reason for obfuscation except to prevent third party applications to use or export your data.

In addition, MS Money makes a large production of migrating from one version of Money to another. The ability to upgrade earlier US versions ended with Money 2005, a limited version of which, fortunately, is at this time still available for download from Microsoft. Converting from Money 99 to Sunset or 2008 required a two step process of first converting 99 to 2005, then 2005 to Sunset.

Start in about 2004 or so, Money was sold with a two year subscription to online services. Put another way, online services would expire after two years. This required upgrading to the latest software every two years. Regrettably, the software never really improved significantly during this period, so the upgrade merely extended the online service periods, but kept the same quirks and bugs as the previous versions.

Besides yearly versions, Microsoft sold versions targeted and localized to foreign markets, namely, UK, International English, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, etc. Amazingly, the banking systems in some of these markets did not embrace the OFX electronic financial language standard developed by Microsoft and others. Of course, the currency, date and time formats, and other details were different from US English versions. All of these issues can be and have been perfectly handled by intelligent applications with help from the Windows operating system. But not Microsoft Money. It is impossible to open a Money file created by a different regional version.

Money will not directly convert (or open) a Money file from another region. The reason for this other than "because they could" are unknown (please supply some plausible reasons here).

As older PC's fail, and applications must be migrated and upgraded, a significant stumbling block remain in the difficulty of converting the original Money files to the latest format. It is a hassle to convert US versions, requiring two steps. Converting non-US versions requires QIF export and simultaneous re-import, and does not import all the data in the source file not supported by the QIF interchange format.

Experiments

We are experimenting with some direct conversion processes with the goal of perfectly directly converting as many versions and regions as possible to the US 2008 or Sunset versions. So far, the conversion is experimental and there is no software product to allow others to convert the files.

Submitting a File for Conversion

If you wish to participate in the experiments, leave a message on the Features Request section of the forum. You will be given an upload link, or you can create a share on a cloud storage service and upload the file there. You should compress (e.g., zip) and encrypt the file prior to uploading.

• To Upload a File for Conversion
  • Copy your Money file and open the copy.
  • Remove any passwords.
  • Change or mangle the account identifiers (account numbers) and your personal information.
    • Make sure that you do not keep real account numbers and passwords especially in any bank or investment accounts. It should be impossible to access your accounts using this file. Otherwise, you will make PalOMoney.com a target for international criminal networks.
  • Compress and encrypt your file using a zip program, etc.
  • Create an account or Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc., where you can upload your file. It will be too large to email.
  • Send a Private Message via the forums or via Contact Us link with a link to your file.
  • We will download your file and delete it from the share.
  • After conversion, we will upload the converted file for you to test.
  • Open the converted file in the new version of Money and check that the accounts, balances, etc., look ok.
  • Restore the account identifiers, and passwords.
  • Optionally, you can use PalOMoney to restore online functionality to the latest versions of Money.

If enough of these conversion work smoothly, we will publish a utility to do the conversion without the hassle of the above steps.