New Home MSMoney Install Files for Linux

[N G]

Hi everyone,

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QerT2ylQzDK4an76atBpcdivF9Hy-nIa?usp=sharing

This link is where the zip file will live. Grab the latest one if there is more than one. Once the latest is known to be good I'll remove older ones.

Since I can package binary files,  the US sunset deluxe installer as well as the modified mnyob99.dll is included. MSMoneyquotes is not. This is tested so far on the US version of Sunset Deluxe.

Please take a look at the  README file on how to get started, and a more detailed guide for reference in the notes folder. I'll be working on cleaning up the README and guide files so if anyone has any input, questions, clarifications please let me know.

Thanks for trying this out!

Nathan

[N G]

Updated zip file date 8 Feb 2025. USMoneyDlxSuset.exe is not included in the zip but is available for download separately from the zip.

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

This is a reply to the following post on the other MS Money on Linux thread

https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft-money/c/8tKQGnxElpE/m/KKhGqcJLAQAJ

Hi Nathan,

I copied your entire post with the 3 greb commands and added them to my notes.

I've been forcing myself to use the terminal more often.

Copying and pasting the greb commands should satisfy most newbies.  

I also think that you could mention Software Manager and Synaptic as sources to check / install - for the 'new newbies'.

Putting MS Money through its paces, I tried restoring from a backup.  I figured that that is a pretty resource-intensive process and if a problem was going to pop up, that's where it would happen.  But, no, MS Money performed the restore without any issues.

You had mentioned in one of your posts on the other thread, about trying other dpi settings on the Graphics tab of winecfg.  I have mine set to 100, it's a compromise between being able to see and having my most-used toolbar item visible.  I tried bumping the setting up to144 but Money froze at the sign-in screen.  I figured my graphics card couldn't handle it.

The well-documented subtotal alignment issue on the Account List page remains but I put that in the small potato's column.

-Kevin N.

[N G]

I was working with another guy and printing was something he uses in Money. I thought I had been able to print the financial plan in the past but it doesn’t work now. Account balances from the Account List works, and I think many Reports and Charts work. The Monthly Report did not, sadly. I’m still working the debug side of things to see if there’s anything we can do about it. I’m not a programmer/developer so if it’s more complicated than editing scripts I hit a wall.

I don’t have much of a need to print but I’m sure understand some people do. Make sure to set up the printer in Linux, and then Money will use it.

I do want to try to gather up these “small potatoes” just so we know what they are and track them from one version of wine to the next. These kinds of things would be good to have in the faq type document.

I’ll mention Software Manager as well. Maybe I will put those grep commands into Install.sh so the results get logged to the wine-install.log. So far when I look at different people’s wine-install.log they all look mostly the same. If there are any differences they really stand out to me. Thanks for guiding me to think about this. 

That’s great for restoring your backup. I’ve been very lucky not to have any corruption issues. I don’t let Money create backups, I have another method for backing up my nas that grabs everything. Good to know it works for you though. I have run file repair, never had a problem with that.

That’s interesting Money hangs for you at the higher dpi setting. Very curious.I have set it so high that I couldn’t do anything in Money. Fortunately, running winecfg and setting it to something reasonable is the solution. I appreciate you “putting Money through its paces.” It will make documenting lessons learned easier.

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

I have an old HP LaserJet 1102w printer and it printed out an account balances report with no problem.  Like yourself though, I don't usually print anything from MS Money.

For me, the Account List page shows all relevant information, it's just the Subtotal for each block of accounts is rendered off-screen.  

Although there is a vertical scrollbar which 'should' provide needed visibility, it seems that the scrollbar is fixed to only scroll the first column of the page.  

There doesn't seem to be a way to move focus away from the first column so that the Subtotal would be visible.

I double-checked winecfg again with 144 dpi and it hung again at the Money Sign-In screen.  I had to End the Process in the System Monitor.  I'm not going to do that test again.  I'm perfectly satisfied with 100 dpi.

All of the reports seem to generate as expected although I confess that I didn't test every one of them.  The monthly report, took some time to render, but it did work for me.

[N G]

I think if I really needed to print stuff I would use Reports to create a report with what I need. 

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Oh absolutely, a report is the way to go when printing.  

I was just pointing out the 'small potato' in the Account List screen.

Senior moment alert, I meant to say that "there is a 'Horizontal' scroll bar which 'should' provide needed visibility..."

-Kevin N.

[N G]

All good dude! I knew what you meant,

I should have been working on the faq and README today but it's so easy to get sucked into trying to figure out why the Account List Subtotals are doing that, trying different things from winetricks, with and without ie7, which dlls in winecfg can be set as builtin vs native.....

In testing, I realized I never actually used the tax section of Money before. Not sure if anyone does, but everything seemed functional.

I spent all day on it!

[N G]

New version msmoney.zip_9Feb2025

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QerT2ylQzDK4an76atBpcdivF9Hy-nIa?usp=drive_link

Stability and reliability updates. Winetricks-2022 is used for ie7 and winetricks-2025 is now used for everything else to ensure up-to-date dlls. This is for compatibility with newer versions of wine.

Install.sh will log what version of winbind, cabextract, xdg-utils, and python3 is installed (or not installed). If MSMoneyquotes.exe is named something else, as long as it's the only exe file the script will grab it and rename it to msmoneyquotes.exe in the prefix.

MSMoney.sh will log a little bit more verbosely  but not enough to affect performance.This is because wine 9 and wine 10 exist and logging will be helpful. For example, Money doesn't work in wine 10 without iertutil, but it will in wine 9. This log file and the one for msmoneyquotes is erased every time they are run.

In extras, there is wine-controlpnl.sh that  will open a mini Control Panel. It's not very useful, just wanted to point out what it is.

Thanks!

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Per the following page in the AppDB on Winehq, the file in question for the subtotal alignment issue of the Accounts List screen is comctl32.dll

Unless there's been an update to comctl32l.dll, the tradeoff of having the subtotals line up, don't seem worth it.

WineHQ - Microsoft Money Money Plus Deluxe Sunset

[N G]

Yeah that's my work too!  :-D

I just tested comctl32 from winetricks-2025 again, same outcome. The dll in wintricks is from 2001 so it's a bit old.

[N G]

I reworked the README file, combining the important parts of the previous documents.

Hopefully it reads better and has a better balance of "what to do" and "how it works."

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

The README looks & reads well. Of course, everything in there is now familiar to me.

There is a lot there but I don't see anything that would scare off someone looking to get MS Money on Linux.

In the section "If you decide to rerun Install.sh..." Something that could be mentioned is that the Pocketsense folder with the user's settings will be overwritten with the default Pocketsense folder.  (Take the necessary precautions) 

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Thanks for taking a look Kevin.

The README looks & reads well. Of course, everything in there is now familiar to me.

This has been my problem as well.

 

There is a lot there but I don't see anything that would scare off someone looking to get MS Money on Linux.

I can add a disclaimer that it looks complicated but the steps are very easy. I wonder if README could be the basis for the article on Dan's website?

 

In the section "If you decide to rerun Install.sh..." Something that could be mentioned is that the Pocketsense folder with the user's settings will be overwritten with the default Pocketsense folder.  (Take the necessary precautions) 

Pocketsense shouldn't be affected by rerunning Install.sh., but unzipping a new msmoney.zip could. I'll add a section for that.

I was wondering if msmoney should be renamed to msmoneysetup. The word msmoney shows up a lot it could be confusing, so maybe msmoneysetup and msmoneyprefix? Thoughts?

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Along with the 'it looks complicated' disclaimer a special emphasis should be made that the installation is almost entirely automated.

Changing the name to msmoneysetup to avoid confusion is an excellent idea.  

Moneydance suffers from that very shortcoming.  The main Moneydance folder and the Moneydance data files each share the same .moneydance moniker.

You are correct Sir! :) it would be unzipping msmoney that would cause a problem with Pocketsense.

-Kevin N.

[N G]

 - Resent for spelling mistake - 

Kevin,

If you’re still having the libvulkan.so.1 error, install the 32bit version of it. I had learned this in the past but recently “relearned”.

# apt-get install libvulkan1:i386

I’m adding this to the README as well.

Nathan

[N G]

New version, 11Feb2025

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QerT2ylQzDK4an76atBpcdivF9Hy-nIa?usp=sharing

- changed msmoney to msmoneysetup

- tweaked scrubber.py for python3

- cleaned up README a little more

- "re-learned" that vcrun2005 and vcrun2008 are necessary

I encountered the same problem Kevin had the first time he tried use pocketsense where it crashed Money and corrupted his mny file. I reinstalled Debian 12 on my laptop yesterday to be more in line with regular Linux (I usually run Siduction / Debian Unstable). On my new build I had the crash/corruption problem as well. A little bit of history:

I used to create the prefix with msxml3, msxml4, ie7, vcrun2005, and vcrun2008. Visual C++ Runtimes 2005 and 2008. At some point in the last few years, it seemed like wine improved and Money didn't need the vcruntime libraries anymore. Turns out something has changed in wine 10 and Money needs them again.

Nathan

[Gerardus Doedee]

Excellent work Nathan. I'm following this thread and will take action once things "calm down" a bit. Changes have been coming fast and furiously (Do have a working installation of MS Money on XUbuntu22 with Wine8, which deep-sixes under Win10 -- had to revert back to Wine8)

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

What do you think about outsourcing the whole Wine installation in README to Winehq?

They really do a bang-up job of providing newbie-friendly, easy to follow, step-by-step, copy and paste instructions.

My first installation of Wine, 2 or 3 weeks ago was complete in a few minutes.

It would help to clean up the README so that you could concentrate on your program.

I realize that tweaking the README could lead one to mental-illness, so please take this with a grain of salt. ;)

-Kevin N.

[N G]

I’m feeling pretty good about where things are right now. Once more people try it out and report back with problems I’ll take another look. 

Later when I get home I’ll downgrade to Wine 8 and run Install.sh. Hopefully I can see what happens if I upgrade to wine 10.0. 

Keep in mind if you run Install.sh it will create a prefix separate from any other prefixes you have. 

Nathan

[N G]

I didn’t know they do that kind of thing. Do you mean appdb? I thought that was all from volunteers like us. 

Like I said in my last post I’m feeling pretty good with where things are right now. I really didn’t like that you experienced that crash/corruption event, I don’t want that to happen to anyone. Since it happened to me and I think I got it with the vcruntimes I think it’s a good time to wait and see.

 Nathan 

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

> I didn’t know they do that kind of thing. Do you mean appdb? I thought that was all from volunteers like us. 

I think I have miscommunicated what I meant by outsourcing.  

I was suggesting that in the README, you could simply post a link to Winehq's download and install webpage to give user the necessary instructions to install Wine.

>  I really didn’t like that you experienced that crash/corruption event...

I did experience crashes, at first due to iertutils needing to be installed because I was using Wine 10 and then later with what must've been a corrupted .ofx file.

But I never experienced my MS Money file being corrupted in the process.

> Like I said in my last post I’m feeling pretty good with where things are right now...

You're not the only one feeling good. :) MS Money is operating smoothly and consistently.  I've had no more issues importing .ofx files.

I have to say that with having the Edge browser, Outlook, Excel, Word, Soundtouch and now MS Money all running in Linux the line between Linux and Windows just got blurred that much more.

-Kevin N.

[Tom Roberts]

Imho, you guys have done an exemplary job of collaboration, and it was completely transparent to the forum. Those two good qualities should not be taken for granted because they stand out given the absence thereof in many parts of the world.

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[N G]

Hi Gerardus,

I just installed wine 8.0 and my existing prefix worked without errors. I rebuilt the prefix with the Install.sh script with wine 8.0 and again, no problems. If you decide to give it a try I’m optimistic that we can get it running for you. Install.sh will create a new Money installation in msmoneyprefix, it won’t touch what you already have. For reference, the command to install a previous version of wine looks like the following:

# apt-get install winehq-stable=8.0.0.0~bookworm-1 wine-stable=8.0.0.0~bookworm-1 wine-stable-amd64=8.0.0.0~bookworm-1 wine-stable-i386=8.0.0.0~bookworm-1

I am running Debian 12, so the codeword for that is bookworm. In the README are links to how to install wine for the different versions of Linux and MacOS. 

There are four items listed in that command above, and they are all required. There i386 package isn’t required unless you want to ruhn 32-bit prefixes.

If you run Install.sh, it will create a log file for the installation. If there are any problems we can look at that file to diagnose any problems.

Nathan

On Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 2:02:04 AM UTC+9 gerardu...@gmail.com wrote:

[N G]

Tom,

Thanks! I appreciate the sentiment. Wherever we’re going, we’ll get there together.

Nathan

[Gerardus Doedee]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for your reply.

No worries about the installation of Wine itself. That's all set. I'm using the stable channel.

My existing prefix under Wine8 was not built using your latest & greatest scripts: rather it was built using the instructions found for MS Money on the AppDB part of WineHQ. After upgrading  to Wine10, that prefix borked: Money wouldn't even start, so I rolled back to Wine8. As far as winetricks is concerned, I installed it manually (located under /usr/local/bin). When running winetricks, the default prefix is located under ~/.wine and the prefix for MS Money is located under ~/.local/share/wineprefixes

I have a VM that I can use for testing. This VM,  as far as Wine / winetricks / MS Money are concerned,  is set up the same way as my main rig. I plan to 

1 Upgrade to Wine10 again. It will bork my existing MS Money prefix, but that's OK

2 Using the existing winetricks, delete the existing MS Money prefix

Then I have some questions before I start testing your scripts:

a Does the existing default prefix (~/.wine) have to be removed? (I believe this prefix is put in place by Wine itself, not winetricks)

b Does the existing winetricks have to be removed? I'm asking this because I see that your scripts run the Money install from winetricks 2022 and winetricks 2025 under ~/msmoneysetup/winetricks. (I don't want to run into a situation where my existing winetricks conflicts with yours)

If my existing winetricks needs to be removed, how? Again, its manually installed under /usr/local/bin. If yes, I can just remove /usr/local/bin/winetricks, but I'm sure there are other files to be removed like winetricks cache files (located where?).

I realize that these questions might go beyond the scope of your project, but any feedback is appreciated.

Cheers,

Gerardus

[N G]

Hi Gerardus,

I wonder if the reason your prefix doesn’t work when you upgrade to Wine 10 is because you might need to install iertutil with winetricks? See below for more info.

As for your questions:

a - No, you don’t need to delete any existing prefixes.  Install.sh will create a whole new prefix (msmoneyprefix).

b - Also no. I wanted msmoneysetup to be standalone and self-contained. It is true having winetricks “installed” in /usr/bin and running a stray copy elsewhere can create confusion and problems.  However, the way my scripts are created,  Install.sh doesn’t look for or use the winetricks that’s “installed” on your system. I can’t know what condition a user’s system is in, so rather than assume anything I bundle what is needed. In short, whatever winetricks you have won’t interfere with Install.sh or anything in msmoneysetup.

Some thoughts on what you’re describing:

I’m not familiar with how ~/.local/share/wineprefixes was created on your system. Maybe it’s something specific to the version Xubuntu that you’re running? Are you using something like WineGUI?

The default location for a wine prefix is ~/.wine, and that’s why your winetricks is creating that. .wine is the default so if it’s not there winetricks will create it. If you want winetricks to work with a prefix other than ~/.wine, you have to tell winetricks about it:

$ WINEPREFIX=~/.local.share/wineprefixes/{the name of your prefix}  winetricks   (this will use the winetricks on your system)

The Install.sh script avoids all the confusion by being explicit about everything. By me bundling in the older 2022 winetricks, I can specify it is used for installing ie7. For some reason that I haven’t figured out yet, the current winetricks (probably the one on your system) doesn’t install ie7 correctly. This causes weirdness with Money. I still think it’s a good idea to use the latest winetricks for everything else Money needs, so that’s why the 2025 version is also bundled. When I have time to figure out why the current winetricks has trouble with ie7 I’ll post to the winetricks maintainer and hopefully get it fixed.

I think if you were able to install iertutil via winetricks into your current Money prefix it would probably work with wine10. I never installed iertutil until working with Kevin who had wine 10 before I did. In wine 9, iertutil isn’t required.

Later on when you get msmoneysetup and msmoneyprefix set up and working you can remove your old prefix if you’d like.

In linux, files and folders that start with a period are hidden. You can check a box in settings/preferences in your file manager program to show hidden files. Then you can look into your home folder, .local/share/wineprefixes and remove what you don’t need.

The command to delete (files and folders) in the command line is rm -rf but there is some danger to this if you make a mistake. The command line does NOT have a recycle bin. We can cover this later if you’d like, or you can google as well.

The cache for winetricks is in. /home/user/.cache/winetricks. You don’t have to delete anything here. No matter which version of winetricks, it will use this location. The purpose of the cache is so winetricks doesn’t have to repeatedly download things over and over. 

Thanks for all the questions, these will questions will be similar for others coming from Windows. Don’t hesitate to ask if anything comes up.

A personal note: since writing the Install.sh script I can test and experiment and not worry about breaking anything. All I need to do is run Install.sh again and it rebuilds my money prefix from scratch in a few minutes. I probably run it 25 times a day now 😂 A former coworker had commented to me that a few minutes with a mostly automated Install.sh script vs “fighting with wine for a day is a huge improvement!”  So feel free to experiment!

I hope this helps, and good luck with your testing!

Nathan

[N G]

New Version: 13Feb2025

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QerT2ylQzDK4an76atBpcdivF9Hy-nIa?usp=drive_link

Found the problem with the 2025 winetricks. I made the change to winetricks-2025 bundled in msmoneysetup/winetricks and removed winetricks-2022. Also posted to the winetricks devs to let them know. Hopefully they will either incorporate the change or fix it.

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

13Feb2025:

Installs MS Money et al - as expected

Installs IE7 quietly - as per the change you made to Winetricks 2025.

Winetricks 2022 no longer installs - as expected.

README needs to be updated to reflect the removal of Winetricks 2022.  Also13Feb2025 changes to the changelog section at the top.

Nothing much else to report.  Great job!

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Cool, thanks for checking it out. I’ll make the changes to README.

Thanks!

Nathan

[N G]

Kevin, 

If you want to try another experiment, go into winecfg, graphics tab. Click the Emulate a virtual desktop checkbox and set the virtual desktop to the resolution for your monitor. For me on my laptop it’s 1920 x 1080. When I do that I can set dpi to 144.

If this works for you (and it’s an improvement) I’ll add that to the README. 

Thanks,

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Re: Experiment.  

I ticked the option to Emulate a virtual desktop.  

Set it to 1366x768 - the resolution of my laptop.

Set the dpi to 144.

I received the attached notice when I fired up MS Money.

I was, however, able to log in this time - no freeze.

So doing the Emulation resolved the freeze issue but 144 dpi on a laptop screen is just too large.

100 dpi seems ideal for me.

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Thanks for checking that Kevin. Much appreciated. Maybe if you ever hook a monitor to your machine that setting might come in handy.

Attached is the latest README, it's also included in the current zip file.

-Dan,

Might be about time to do some screenshots and generate an article.

Is there anything thing specific you need format wise for your website?

Thanks again guys.

Nathan

[Cal Learner]

Note that for use in the hosts file to disable a URL, there is a slight preference for 0.0.0.0 over 127.0.0.1.

https://jmanteau.fr/posts/using-0-0-0-0-instead-of-127-0-0-1-in-etc-hosts/

[Gerardus Doedee]

Finally had some time to follow up on this and start some testing. Note that all tests and troubleshooting have been performed on a virtual machine. Easy to back up and recover. Also note that this is a long writeup.

Description of base VM

Xubuntu 22.4, kernel 6.5.0.45, 100GB HD, 16GB RAM, 4 processors
Wine 8.02 stable, but missing winbind and libvulcan1:i386
winetricks (2024)
MS Money prefix w/ ie7, msxml3, msxml4 vcrun2005, vcrun2008, mono, but missing all fonts and iertutil

(As stated before, this MS Money prefix was built using info from appdb on winehq.com. This info is in need of updating)

Other Windows apps running in the MS Money prefix (bad idea, I know): Standalone exe (no install) videoplayer, standalone exe (no install) password manager, wise-installer notekeeping program. (All data from these programs saved/backed up outside of the prefix/VM)

MS Money runs on the VM, but is behaving wonky. Mainly screens not updating when they should. Have to go to home screen first, then open the screen again that previously wouldn’t open.

Attempts to fix existing MS Money prefix

Attempt 1
Used apt to install winbind and libvulcan1:i386
Installed most current version of winetricks from github
Used winetricks to install missing fonts and iertutil (note that VM is still at Wine 8.02 at this point)
Used Xubuntu package mgr to update to Wine 10
Rebooted VM
Used winetricks to update MS Money prefix to Wine 10
Rebooted MS Money prefix
Started MS Money - fail

Deleted the VM and restored backup so that we’re back at the starting point

Attempt 2
Used apt to install winbind and libvulcan1:i386
Installed most current version of winetricks from github
Used Xubuntu package mgr to update to Wine 10
Rebooted VM
Used winetricks to update MS Money prefix to Wine 10
Used winetricks to install missing fonts and iertutil (note that VM is at Wine 10.0 at this point)
Rebooted MS Money prefix
Started MS Money - fail

I suspect at this point that my problems with this MS Money prefix stem from the fact that IE7 was originally installed with winetricks 2024, which, as Nathan pointed out, installed it incorrectly. That’s why he included winetricks 2022 in the Feb 11 package before he fixed winetricks 2025 in the Feb 13 package.

Will abandon the existing wonky MS Money prefix and delete it. Will create a new prefix running only the windows apps other than MS Money.

Deleted the VM used for 2nd attempt to fix MS Money and restored backup so that we’re back at the starting point

Testing MS Money with Feb 11 package

Used apt to install winbind and libvulcan1:i386
Installed most current version of winetricks from github (not used any further during testing of Feb 11 package)
Used Xubuntu package mgr to update to Wine 10
Rebooted VM
Placed copy of .mny file in Documents folder on VM (host) (so that MS Money can access it during install)
Extracted msmoneysetup folder to home directory
Copied MS Money installer and MoneyQuotes required files to their respective directories inside of msmoneysetup
Ran install script
Install finished sucessfully
MS Money running as expected in new msmoneyprefix



MS Money related work done after installation:

Checked msmoney prefix: It has w_workaround_wine_bug-26925, msxml3, msxml4, andale, arial, comicsans, courier, georgia, impact, times, trebuchet, verdana, webdings, corefonts, tahoma, iertutil, vcrun2005, vcrun2008, Ie7, mono is installed
Ran winecfg to create drive holding “linked files” (yes, I use that feature)
Ran winecfg to configure Graphics and Desktop integration to my liking: (uncheck “Allow Window Manager to decorate Windows” and “No theme” respectively)
Copied original Win XP calc.exe to c:\windows\system32 in msmoneyprefix to allow for Ctrl-K command to work

Other:

Used “my” version of winetricks to create new “Std32” prefix (located under ~/.local.share/wineprefixes/), installed all fonts and iertutil, installed my “other” Windows apps. All working as expected.

Have done no testing with the Feb 13 package

Let me know if this info is helpful or not, or if I need to shorten / summarize these “missives” in the future.

Cheers,

Gerardus

[Gerardus Doedee]

@ Nathan:

Note spelling errors in the below line in your readme:

apt-get install winbind cabextract xgd-utils python3 zentiy libvulkan1:i386

should be

apt-get install winbind cabextract xdg-utils python3 zenity libvulkan1:i386

Cheers,

Gerardus

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Regarding Emulate a virtual desktop.  

On my laptop the virtual desktop that was created was, understandably, a full-screen desktop.  From the virtual desktop, the Linux desktop can only be accessed using key-combo ALT-TAB.  This could throw some users and should probably be mentioned if a user is interested in using the virtual desktop feature.

I can see this feature becoming very useful when I eventually set up Wine, MS Money and all of my other Window's programs on my Desktop. (dual 24" monitors)

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Glad you got it working Gerardus! Hopefully the fix will be in a future version of winetricks.

What does "linked files" do? I never noticed that feature.

Nathan

[N G]

Thanks Gerardus, let me know if you find anything else.

The spelling fixes are in the current version of msmonetsetup. My laptop is nearing ten years old and some of the keys on my keyboard need to be pushed harder than others. (lame and poor excuse lol)

I appreciate the attention and proofreading though.

Thanks again,

Nathan

[N G]

Thanks Cal, I'll make the change.

Nathan

[N G]

Kevin,

That's awesome! I don't currently run dual monitors but I look forward to reading about how you eventually get it set up.

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Congratulations Nathan!

Your article is live. :)

ameridan – MICROSOFT MONEY OFFLINE 🔴 Ameridan's Blog

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Wow!! Very cool!

I’ve benefitted a lot from this niche community that continues to run “old, unsupported, antiquated software” but I’m happy to be able to give something back. Thanks for the support testing and providing feedback!

Next, chapter, MacOS.

Thanks gents!

Nathan

[Gerardus Doedee]

@ Nathan:

To reply to your question about linked files: It's the feature that allows you to attach a file to a transaction. I use it for bank / CC statements, tax documents pay stubs etc). Transactions with a linked file show with a paperclip in the ledger,.

It makes backup routines more complicated (since now there is more than just the .mny file to back up), but I got it worked out.

Cheers,

Gerardus

[Gerardus Doedee]

@ Nathan:

Re your Feb 13 and Feb14 packages: I read your note about mono no longer being required. However in my testing of these 2 packages, I also saw vcrun2008 no longer present and vb6run added

1) Does my testing show this correctly?

and if so:

2) Would you care to explain the reason for this change?

Thanks,

Gerardus

[N G]

Gerardus,

Yup, that is correct and no problem explaining. The key is that this is always a moving target of sorts since wine is constantly under development. The TL:DR version is I needed to figure out what's needed in wine 10 that's different from previous version of wine.

Longer answer:

For the last few years MS Money was happy to run in wine with just msxml3, msxml4, an ie7. But before that during wine 5 and 6 I had also run vcrun2005 and vcrun2008, as well as dotnet20. I was coming from Windows and I didn't know what was required or how wine worked so I just kept trying things until it worked. I thought the vcruntimes were important for pocketsense in wine 5/6 (no crashes), but every time a new version of wine would be released I would retry to see if those dll were still necessary. I think during wine 7 it seemed like they weren't needed anymore (that wine had improved) so I stopped using them.

Fast forward to last month when wine 10 was released and our little project here got started. Kevin and I discovered that iertutil is now required, and we also had a brief issue with importing from pocketsense. I absolutely don't want users to have issues with crashes or corruption so I started running wine in debug mode to get more insight into what happens between wine and Money when Money is running. For example, in my personal version of msmoneysetup I run with

WINEDEBUG=+loaddll,+comctl,+text WINEPREFIX=~/msmoneyprefix......

I noticed riched text comments during the prefix installation so I added riched30 and those messages have disappeared. Also, +loaddll shows me whether a dll is being loaded as builtin (from wine) or native (from winetricks). msvcrt and msvcrt80 come up quite a bit (outside of the dlls that are installed with Money) and they are available in vcrun2005, 2008, and newer. I picked both at first because Money Sunset was released in 2009 (I believe) so I was casting a wide net (so to speak) to troubleshoot and narrow down what is needed. With testing, vcrun2005 alone is enough to make ofx import work. There were other messages that made me think vb6run was necessary as well, but I will probably be removing that soon. Also, I've been trying to solve the Account List page Subtotal offset problem for years now, and that was another reason why I was testing vb6run; more on that below.

Mono is a replacement for the dotnet libraries, but I don't see anything in the debug logs that indicates it's needed. My preference has been to use whatever is builtin (from wine) primarily and only use the native dll from winetricks if the wine dll causes problems. But if Money isn't using it at all then I don't want anything that's unnecessary in case of unwanted interactions. That's why mono is blocked now. Again, these changes (the vcruntimes, vb6run, and mono) were added/removed to troubleshoot importing from pocketsense with wine 10.


SO! I had a breakthrough last night on the Account List Subtotal problem!

I knew the problem was related to comctl32.dll; the dll that's builtin to wine works well but goofs the subtotal alignment. Running in debug I could see the alignment for Subtotal and the amount was aligned with a negative number. Something was wrong, and only this part. If I used winetricks to install comctl32 it would install version 5.8. This version fixes the subtotals but breaks the File menu. If you click File, Open (or Backup, Print, etc) Money will crash. After some research I was thinking we needed at least version 6.0. So I tried manually copying comctl32 from my winxp VM into C:\windows\system32 in my prefix but that doesn't work; the dll has to be registered (basically "installed"). I tried to manually register the dll but I still have things to learn about this. So......

Then I installed comctl32 from winetricks, let it do what it needs to do, then I copied the winxp version 6 comctl32.dll and overwrote the version 5.8 winetricks version.... and it worked!

So I'll test this some more and if I don't find any unacceptable issues it will be included the next time I upload a msmoneysetup.zip. I originally installed riched30 in troubleshooting the Subtotal problem, but it might not be needed as well. You can probably expect riched30 to disappear at some point as well.

This is probably a more verbose answer to your questions but Money is the only program from Windows that I need in Linux. And it's so important to me that I'm willing to expend time and effort to maintain it. The comctl32 issue is a good example of what I'm doing in the background.

Of course, if you want to run something else in your msmoneyprefix you can certainly modify things as you see fit to support your requirements. My goal is to have a simple, stable, one-click method to configure wine to MS Money runs as reliably as possible. I'm another +20 year Money user, and I want that number to go to 50! 😁️

Nathan

[N G]

Very cool Gerardus.

I've never used that function, mostly and oversight on my part) but it's good to know that it works for you. I'm going to experiment with it just so I can see how it works.

Thanks!

Nathan

[N G]

Everyone,

New version dated 18Feb2025.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QerT2ylQzDK4an76atBpcdivF9Hy-nIa?usp=drive_link

The big fix is Subtotals on the Account List page work! See my previous post to Gerdardus for the details, but an actual comctl32 from winxp sp3 is in the moneyinstaller folder and is copied into the prefix during install. As far as I've been able to test, there have been no glitches that I'm aware of. I tried to avoid comctl32 v5.8 from winetricks but then winecfg and regedit wouldn't work right.  Please let me know if you run into any weirdness. I have left msmoneysetup.zip_14Feb2025 in the shared drive just in case.

Other than that:

- I have removed riched30 and vb6run because I can't see them contributing functionality. I've removed corefonts as well; not sure if corefonts actually contributes much for anyone so please let me know if they are desired. 

- Tahoma will always be installed since much of the Money user interface calls for it.

- General syntax cleaning, again trying to keep things readable for everyone.

Thanks,

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Re: 18Feb2025

Install.sh seems to complete a little faster now without the delays of installing core fonts. 

I detected no detrimental effects (weirdness) from eliminating core fonts, riched30 or vb6run.

Subtotals now correctly align on the Account List screen.

Well done; again. :)

-Kevin N.

Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe version 17.0.120.3817

Distro: Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

A couple of observations...

I had not looked in the /mnybackups folder in a while because I don't keep my data file in the prefix.  For confirmation that Install.sh does indeed look for, find and backup *.mny files that may reside in the prefix, the Sample.mny file is successfully backed up to the mnybackups folder.

In the /notes folder is an acctlist.reg file.  Should that be created in the /registry folder instead?

In the /extras folder a new wineboot.sh file exists.  When would the user need to use this?

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Thanks for checking it out Kevin, a quicker install is nice! Probably not a big deal in everyday practice but I “test and reinstall” a lot these days. 

I notice every time I reinstall Money I lose some of my configuration in the program, like “Show Transaction Forms.” It got me thinking, and I located the settings in the registry. So if I back up the part of the registry with all my settings, then maybe I could have that restored as well. It’s an experiment for now to see how viable it is. If you look into acctlist.reg you can see a whole list of settings. I don’t know what they all do but if you knew which ones were important then we could whittle them down and they could be inserted during install. CurrentFile is interesting, we could prepopulate where your mny file lives.

Reading your post got me thinking about money backup files. It’s possible that someone might create backups to their mny file and have them stored in the prefix. Maybe that’s more likely than the main mny file. Maybe I should look for those as well and back them up.  On the other hand, Money by default puts the mbf files in the same place as the mny file so maybe it doesn’t matter? Thoughts?

Wineboot is also an experiment for when Money crashes on exit. I haven’t experienced any crashes during this process, but it seems like a wineboot (reboot) is better than wineserver-kill. 

Since I retired I finally have time to chase out all these little “rabbit holes” and get a better understanding of how wine works and how we can exploit some things. 

Thanks,

Nathan

On Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 2:34:04 AM UTC+9 kmnu...@hotmail.com wrote:

Hi Nathan,

[Gerardus Doedee]

Thanks for your good work Nathan. I'm now testing your Feb 18 setup. No issues so far...

Since you're now copying original files from WinXP (comctl32) into msmoneyprefix, how about also copying the WinXP calc.exe into c:\windows\system32 in the msmoneyprefix? No setup required, just a straight copy. This will allow Ctrl-K to work in MS Money and bring up the calculator.

It's a small thing, I know, but since you're now cleaning up and chasing "rabbit holes".... Just a suggestion.

Regarding installing other apps into msmoneyprefix: I prefer not to do so since I'm doing a lot of testing with your install scripts. Any time I re-create msmoneyprefix with the latest version of your installer, any app that I may previously have added to the msmoneyprefix is lost. I've created a separate prefix in which to run those other applications.

Re linked files: I've got it set up as follows:

Created a folder on my system called "associated files". This is where all the linked files are stored

The next thing is to create a link from Windows / msmoneyprefix to this "associated files" folder. We'll call it drive L:\

From a Windows system: Create batch file containing "subst" command to create drive L:\ pointing to wherever this "associated files" folder resides on your system. Example: subst L: "<driveletter>\<path to folder>\Associated Files"   . Set batch file to autostart with windows. I now have an L: \drive in Windows

From msmoneyprefix: Use winecfg to create drive L: \ pointing to wherever this "associated files" folder resides on your system. I now have an L:\ drive in msmoneyprefix.

Now you can start using the "linked files" feature in MS Money: Copy the file to be linked into the "associated files" folder first, then set up the link in MS Money. When setting up the link to the attached file in MS Money, make sure to navigate to the L:\ drive and pick the file you just copied into the "associated files" folder.

This setup is "portable" and works no matter how I run money: It works from WinXP or Windows11 "real machines", from WinXP or Windows11 VMs, or from msmoneyprefix.

Question? Feel free to reach out.

Cheers,

Gerardus

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Regarding attempting to restore settings, I think that would be, let's say, ambitious. :)  

I'll bet though that it would be an interesting pet project for someone as adept as yourself.

In our testing environment, having to redo the settings with each release was naturally a little tiresome but in real-use terms, assigning the settings is a one-and-done process.  
Each of us with our own personal setting desires, how would one determine what options warrant being set during installation?  

Finding *.mbf files as well as *.mny files could prove a worthy effort  At the risk of over-stating the obvious though, it would take a Herculean effort on the part of the user to put one's data file(s) and / or backup file(s) in the prefix.

Aside from that one .ofx import that caused MS Money to crash, I have had no further incidents importing .ofx files.  

I've been using Pocketsense's 'combined' ofx file.  (11 accounts).  MS Money seems quite stable.

Even on my Windows installation of MS Money, I now go to the 'Home' screen before closing. :)

-Kevin N.

[Tom Roberts]

Hi Kevin

I'd be interested to know if closing on the Home screen helped avoid a bug.

Tom

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[N G]

Gerdardus,

I’m going to include a GNU version of calc.exe since it’s open source and I wonder if there are legal issues with me “distributing” the real calc.exe. Probably not, and I’m sure our little project won’t be going viral any time soon 😁

For reference it can be found here:

https://github.com/jamesbriggs/wine-calc-project

I believe it works the same as the MS version, just need to rename it to calc.exe. It’s working for me so expect it in the next zip file.

Thanks for sharing the info on Linked Files. I would have to imagine others use it as well so I thank you for sharing your use case.

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Tom,

Closing on the Home screen was first proposed by Nathan as a means to help ensure that MS Money closes properly and doesn't 'hang'.

I have gotten into the habit of doing so, although there were times early on when I forgot to but thankfully without repercussion.

-Kevin N.

[Cal Learner]

Kevin: I uses Windows (currently 11) and I almost never use the "Home" page.

I select Tools->Settings->ProgramSettings->(Display:)StartMoneyWithThisPageOpen:AccountList

Then Tools->Settings->HomePageDisplaySettings and Remove the BillsAndDeposits and SpendingTracker modules. 

[N G]

I think how I would tackle the registry settings would be a short script to be run after setting up Money the way you want. I think I can script exporting the relevant registry key and saving it, then during install have Install.sh process all reg files in the registry folder. This would work just like winetricks; the user can run winetricks.sh, and in this example maybe it would be called GetMoneyReg.sh. Might take a day or two.

I have found in testing that closing from the Account List page seems reliable as well. I’m trying to determine which screens cause the hang. Might be the Monthly Report page, but I’ll keep working on this.On my lowly 10-year-old Asus laptop when I click home there is a pause of 2-3 seconds before the page loads, and my task manager show 100% cpu during that time. Not sure if that’s just my machine, but I did do a clean Debian install a week or two ago. Curious if anyone has seen any performance type issues.

Nathan

[N G]

I pretty much have the same setup. Hopefully with debug logging enabled I can determine what causes the hang. On the other hand, with an actual comct32.dll maybe we won’t see the hang problem. Fingers crossed.

[Tom Roberts]

Ok, its probably a good practice.

Thanks Kevin.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microsoft-money/e8c2f8c9-cd8a-405f-b819-43cfe81d3853n%40googlegroups.com.

[-Kevin N]

Hi Cal,

I display the Bills & Deposits and Favorite Accounts modules on the Home screen.  I find them useful enough.

The 'habit' of closing Money from the Home screen only recently became relevant with the inception of using MS Money with Linux via Wine.

In Windows, there doesn't appear to be any adverse effects as to where you close Money from.  

I'm now closing MS Money from the Home screen on both platforms so that I do things the same way regardless of the OS.

No harm, no foul. :)

-Kevin N.

[Tom Roberts]

I'll try that Cal. I've alwsys opened on the Jomd page.

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[N G]

New Version - 21Feb2025

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QerT2ylQzDK4an76atBpcdivF9Hy-nIa?usp=drive_link

From the README:

- Added GNU Calc.exe to windows/system32 - Source code included for reference
- Imports Money Preferences into registry if ./registry/mnyprefs.reg is present, saves mnyprefs.reg on exit
  - Removed the line regarding Account List page Subtotals
  - Notes on Reports

  - Hopefully caught all the spelling mistakes and typos throughout ;-)

From Install.sh

- Search the prefix for mbf files in addition to mny files

From MSMoney.sh

- Saves mnyprefs.reg on exit (MSMoney Program preferences)

I've been purposefully closing Money from screens other than Home and Account List, trying to trigger Wine to hang. So far it hasn't happened, maybe the WInXP comctl32.dll is helping?

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

The d/l site lists 18Feb2025 instead of 21Feb2025.

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Seems like Google has removed my last post from here as well. Thanks Google.

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Never mind :)

[N G]

Google has blocked the file because of the calc executable. I requested a review, but I need to think of something else.

[N G]

OK, 21Feb2005 version uploaded WITHOUT calc in it. And it was blocked too. I got a warning that my account might get disabled.

So, if you want calc please go to

https://github.com/jamesbriggs/wine-calc-project/tree/master/winecalc/bin

And put winecalc.exe inside moneyinstaller.

Let's try that.

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

The msmoney.zip file created msmoneysetup_21Feb202025 in Home

I renamed it to msmoneysetup.

I tried running Install.sh but it's giving me a permission denied error.

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Thanks for that, I'll take a look.

Solution for calc.exe: I'm just going to have Install.sh go get it ;-)

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

OK, the most recent upload of moneysetup_20Feb2025 behaves as expected.

From my preliminary tests, the mnyprefs.reg file is restoring personal settings as expected. Kudos!

Perhaps though, can the initial warning that ./registry/mnyprefs.reg was not found be quieted.  

You and I understand why the warning is presented but a new user could be understandably thrown with such a warning.

I've noticed in recent builds that the virtual desktop setting is ticked by default on the Graphics tab of winecfg.  Is that intended?

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Finally.....

New NEW version of msmoneysetup.zip_21Feb2025. This one goes out and downloads calc.exe for you, bypassing google.

I can hide the warning, it's really for me for debugging. I can probably turn off a lot of the messages soon.

Virtual desktop is a bleed over from my settings. I need to write a script to sanitize and remove my settings when I upload a new version. I'm open to whatever we think is a good default config. However, Just like for Money settings, I can grab those wine settings as well and automate that.

We're at the creature comfort stage I believe!

[N G]

Everyone,

Updated 21Feb2025 version: msmoneysetup.zip_21Feb2025_2

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QerT2ylQzDK4an76atBpcdivF9Hy-nIa?usp=sharing

In the README:

21Feb2025

- Added info about GNU winecalc.exe - Source code included for reference. Install.sh downloads it from https://github.com/jamesbriggs/wine-calc-project/ and extracts it in moneyinstaller folder.
- Install.sh imports Money preferences (mnyprefs.reg) into the registry if ./registry/mnyprefs.reg is present, saves mnyprefs.reg on exit. MSMoney saves settings on exit every time as well.
- Install.sh imports winecfg preferences (desktopprefs.reg) into the registry if ./registry/desktopprefs.reg is present, MSMoney.sh saves desktopprefs.reg on exit
  - Removed the line regarding Account List page Subtotals since comctl32.dll seems to be working.
  - Clarified notes on Reports
  - Install Other Tools - need wget to go get winecalc.exe
  - Rewrote sections of README for clarity

Install.sh

- Reworked syntax for better form and flow, conditional checking instead of errors on missing files.

Money.sh:

- Backs up MSMoney settings and winecfg settings on exit.

The big takeaway is that if you rerun Install.sh, it will import your MSMoney settings and winecfg settings. It is very close to a one-click solution.

Nathan

[Gerardus Doedee]

Testing msmoneysetup.zip_21Feb2025_2 on a VM

Deleted existing existing msmoneysetup folder

Extracted new msmoneysetup folder from msmoneysetup.zip_21Feb2025_2

Prepped new msmoneysetup folder (copied Money installer, files required for MSMoneyQuote to their respective folders)

Ran ./Install.sh

Let install finish (including the start of MSMoney and a "File, Close" from home page)

Ran MSMoney.sh from desktop

Ctrl-K to start calculator. Error Message calc.exe not found

Errors upon shutdown (no customizations at this point)

regedit: Unable to open the file '.\registry/mnyprefs.reg'

regedit: Unable to open the file '.\registry/desktopprefs.reg'

These 2 errors are consistent: they happen upon every "File, Close" in MSMoney.

What am I missing here?

Re the calculator error: Doesn't look as if there are any downloads from github...

From wine-install.log:

/home/on63k3nd/msmoneysetup/moneyinstaller: Is a directory
unzip:  cannot find or open ./moneyinstaller/calc.zip, ./moneyinstaller/calc.zip.zip or ./moneyinstaller/calc.zip.ZIP.
cp: cannot stat './moneyinstaller/wine-calc-project-master/winecalc/bin/winecalc.exe': No such file or directory

Any feedback appreciated.

Cheers,

Gerardus

[Gerardus Doedee]

Sorry, the errors referred to above should read

regedit: Unable to open the file './registry/mnyprefs.reg'

regedit: Unable to open the file './registry/desktopprefs.reg'

Wrong slash, \ versus /    . Windows habits, what can I say? :)

Gerardus

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

Re: 21Feb2025_2

I seem to have had worse luck than Gerardus.  

I tried installing 21Feb2025_2 from scratch.  (I deleted msmoneysetup and msmoneyprefix).

The installation of MS Money completed but clicking on File > Open caused MS Money to crash.

Running MSMoney.sh. > MS Money would crash with File > Open.

I reverted back to 21Feb2025.  MSMoney operates as expected.

I tried updating 21Feb2025 to 21Feb2025_2. (I did not delete msmoneysetup or msmoneyprefix).

When prompted to Replace file 'x', I chose to Replace All.

The installation of MS Money was completed as before.  Also, as before, MS Money would crash when accessing File > Open.

I reverted back to 21Feb2025.  MSMoney operates as expected.

-Kevin N.

[N G]

Can you guys post your wine-install.log please? I’m investigating.

For Gerdardus, do you have wget installed on your system?

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

wine-install.log attached as requested

-Kevin N.

[N G]

OK I think I got it. 

comctl32.dll didn’t get copied because I combined two copy commands into one and it failed. 

Calc.exe failed because the web url ended up with an extra space.

Not sure why they didn’t fail for me last night since msmoneyprefix gets dumped each time, my bad but still scratching my head.

Anyway, expect a new zip file shortly.

Nathan

[Gerardus Doedee]

Wget is installed. See results from from test below where I downloaded winetricks again into my home folder

wget  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
--2025-02-21 17:52:48--  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
Resolving raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)... 2606:50c0:8002::154, 2606:50c0:8003::154, 2606:50c0:8000::154, ...
Connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)|2606:50c0:8002::154|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 792441 (774K) [text/plain]
Saving to: ‘winetricks’

winetricks          100%[===================>] 773.87K  --.-KB/s    in 0.1s    

2025-02-21 17:52:48 (5.64 MB/s) - ‘winetricks’ saved [792441/79244

wine-install log attached

Cheers,

Gerardus

On Friday, February 21, 2025 at 5:33:08 PM UTC-5 gia...@gmail.com wrote:

[N G]

Apologies guys, new zip file is up.

msmoneysetup.zip_22feb2025

Nathan

[-Kevin N]

Hi Nathan,

22Feb2025 looks to have everything back to normal.

CTRL-K calls up the calculator.

Phew! :)

-Kevin N.

[Gerardus Doedee]

Testing 22Feb2025 in VM

Deleted existing existing msmoneysetup folder

Extracted new msmoneysetup folder from msmoneysetup.zip_22Feb2025

Prepped new msmoneysetup folder (copied Money installer, files required for MSMoneyQuote to their respective folders)

Ran ./Install.sh

Let install finish (including the start of MSMoney and a "File, Close" from home page)

Ran MSMoney.sh from desktop

Still have Errors upon shutdown (no customizations at this point)

regedit: Unable to open the file './registry/mnyprefs.reg'

regedit: Unable to open the file './registry/desktopprefs.reg'

These 2 errors are consistent: they happen upon every "File, Close" in MSMoney.

Calculator works

Not sure what the deal is with those 2 regedit errors

Cheers,

Gerardus

[N G]

Gerardus,

Please try the newest zip file, it should have things sorted out for you. I also started a new thread also since this one has grown quite a bit.

Nathan