How Many Money Users DO We Think Are Out There

[JB]

Like most users on the MM Group, I can say I've been using Money for 20 years.    Looking at the threads...there seems to be so much mutual help and knowledge it's unreal for software that was pulled years ago.  It's clearly just so loved.

Despite being obsolete for years, the user interface and usability is just brilliant.  The whole software and man-machine interface is so usable. It rarely crashes (old and new Windows versions) and it's now loaded and running on Samsung's latest SnapDragon Galaxy Book Edge with W11! What a technical wonder!  

Frankly I hadn't considered the new Snapdragon chipset v MM when I bought the new laptop; but well done to the original engineering team isolating the programme from the multiple operating system upgrades etc.

The software still works, is quick and from a programming perspective it's so solid.

Yep...I have found a couple of functions that seemed to have fallen over; and one is annoying but it's not at all a 'crash and burn' issue. 

However, like many, we must be getting to the last set of users.

Three thoughts...

1 Do we have any idea how many of us there are left?  Best estimates? Worldwide?  Regional? 

2 Does anyone know where the original source code went and if there's a similar commercial programme under a different name that could possibly handle a migration?  The MM programming is so clever, usable and bug free the programming team should have grabbed it but???

3 Is there a mutual technical MM user group that has any of the original technicians that are still interested in fixing stuff?

Finally

One of the glitches I have is in the 'Portfolio' section where, when trying to customise a 'Portfolio View' the 'Group Headings' is blank and resetting has no impact. Neither has a Repair process fixed it.  So I can't customise views any more.  (I hadn't spotted the glitch for some time; so I can't state when it appeared.  Maybe on loading to Snapdragon technology or maybe sometime afterwards? )

If anyone has had the same glitch and found the solution please shout out!   

JB

[Bill & Michelle Becker]

JB,

Welcome to the Microsoft Money Group. You can see the group members here:

https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft-money/members

You are #329 so there are at least that many users.  I expect that there are several thousand more.

Bill Becker

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[Rich Tubbs]

Hi all,

I am also a 20+ year user of MM. Tried a couple others and there is just no comparison. Microsoft sure goofed up in a big way when they let this program go.

 

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microsoft-money/CAJy4qrEbxn2%2BfnKpTf9eSgQCJFA9PSxeMD7nh1KneQKSk5cObA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dan Adkins]

Regarding your glitch, to determine if related to Snapdragon?, open a new file and see if Groupings displays properly (I'm betting it will).  My guess is that the respective tag within your Access relational database lost track, similar to my findings reported in my article https://microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com/2019/12/30/fixing-missing-business-transactions/ 

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[Stephen Google]

MS Money will always work for me since I can always run it in a Virual Machine for a previous operating system

[Martin Cole]

Stephen
I was wondering if your question was more global than just the group?  Guess that will never be known as I for one only fell over this group a few years ago searching to solve a problem, and appreciate all the help (and consistent reading) it has provided.

But made me wonder if anyone else has a secondary, back-up (shadow) system also running?

When I thought MM might be getting 'full and old' and I was thinking I might have to move up to W11, I copied MM history to, and started using, Banktree but in comparison the reporting is rubbish (for my programing level) and the input screens and presentation still not comparible.  But it does multi-fx, investments, has a mobile app for the cash accounts only.  And is still only £35 purchase with a good email help line. 

I am nothing to do with the company BTW!!  Sounds like I am selling it... just saying and wondering who else has a secondary system and is there anything modern comparible with our MM !!

https://www.banktree.co.uk/

Martin
Norwich UK

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.

[Peter Moore (RedPete)]

My current laptop doesn't have an upgrade path to Windows 11.  When I get round to it I will buy a new laptop for most usage but keep this one to run MM. I will probably not connect it to the Internet so security issues with continuing to run Win 10 shouldn't be an issue.

[Stephen Google]

There are ways of upgrading 'unsupported PCs to Windows 11". I did so on 10 year old Dell laptop which doesn't have a TPM. See https://www.elevenforum.com/t/bypass-windows-11-system-requirements-on-unsupported-pc.1989/

[Ameridan (microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com)]

Only problem with that -  Microsoft is advising users who installed Windows 11 on unsupported hardware to revert back to Windows 10, as they have removed workarounds that previously allowed these upgrades. 

[Stephen Google]

No, the workaround in the link I gave still works - I last used it a few days ago.

[Gerardus Doedee]

Another long-time user here. 22 years.

I'm running the software through Win11 or WinXP virtual machines, and natively in Linux. Want to move away from WinXP since I haven't been able to get MSMoneyQuotes to work in XP even with internet access enabled.

Gerardus

[Cal Learner]

Stephen: Is that VIrtualbox?

[Stephen Google]

I use Hyper V available in Windows 11 Pro

[JB]

Having raised a few points and got fabulous responses, I thought it courteous to keep the dialogue going on each until naturally exhausted.  This header is therefore dropped in to the first response and hoping all can see what the aim is.  All replies appreciated and a wealth of knowledge that I've gained for sure.  Wow!  It'd be great to get a worldwide user group to see what weight of demand still exists. 

SG - will be interested to hear how you configured that in W11.  I still have the old disc but am running the Sunset version (if I recall correctly - it's the Money2005-UK-QFE2.exe file)  For example...what Windows vv did you load in to the virtual machine?

JB

[JB]

Hi Martin

My question of a guess at remaining users was a general one, as opposed to only this Group chat.  Like you I just fell into this group trying to seek a fellow MM user and traveller and maybe a solution.  

Thanks for the info re Banktree.  I'll take a look.

Having looked at a few MM replacements I've been disappointed and can hear the same in your response!  It's because MM is so damn good!

Many years ago and without documenting anything, I'm sure I cam across the business that took over MM from Microsoft when they pulled it commercailly.  I can't track that business anymore so maybe0 I'm just being clunky or they have gone out of business.  

JB

[JB]

Definitely a plan!!  I can say that MM runs on a Samsung Galaxy Book Edge with a Snapdragon chip etc.  Whether the glitches i have encountered are as a consequence frankly I can't tell as I only spotted one the other day and have been running for some months.  I may try and load a MM backup on an old W10 machine with Intel and see if the same issue can be spotted.

JB   

On Monday, 17 February 2025 at 12:13:56 UTC redp...@gmail.com wrote:

[JB]

That's of real interest to me. Thanks.  Having migrated to a newer laptop, the old laptop is perfectly adequate (RAM/SSD and just replaced a cracked screen ex China) so to figure a way around the TPM prob will get my attention in the next few weeks.  Not being a pure techie, frankly I just gave up as the the old machine just 'said no' due to the TPM problem.

JB

[JB]

Oh no!!!  It's a downstream issue for me.  Appreciated.

JB

[JB]

100%.  Nothing compares to MM.  For private use MM is just incredible.  Commercially I use Quickbooks Online.  The MM interface is still far superior and as hosted on the laptop just no lag or delay while their backend server copes and responds. 

JB

[JB]

 Ameridan  Thanks for the link and possible solution.  I've crawled over MM to see if I can re-trigger a setting that in turn might re-enable the view I'm seeking.

The issue.  I have a number of views in the Portfolio section (UK version).  Some of the views are simply presenting 'nothing'. No data at all. 

I've tried to 'Change Portfolio View' ¬'Customise Current View' to see if altering the current blank view 'resets' and retriggers a lookup.

Within 'Customise Current View' there are four sub tabs: Accounts, Portfolio Columns, Grouping and Sorting.  'Grouping has no content whilst the others are populated correctly.  So having tried to re trigger the customised view it fails as there are no Groups to sort by. 

I'm trying to get a customised view of investments by holdings. I've delted views (that don't work) and tried to recreat new customised views but the Grouping tab is always blank.   Bizarrely, and one of my customised views for 'Holdings' still works; but now sorts by account!  So it's a glitch that I think resides in the Grouping labels.  

Irrespective, I appreciate the input and if I find a solution I will post as others may encounter the same issue at some point.

JB

[JB]

Bear in mind I'm catching up quick and reading frantically however I did mean to share this link earlier.  No doubt the experts among you have already fallen across the information but it may help a few that hadn't come across it.

Microsoft (MS) Money Help, Information and FAQ Pages

[Dick Watson]

Thanks for posting this datapoint. I've been considering a Snapdragon laptop to replace my 2020-vintage XPS13 and Money been the single most important app on the "compatible or not?!?" list. I've always figured it was highly likely to run successfully in emulation, but it's good to know somebody else has already crossed this rubicon.

Sadly, for the Snapdragon, there are a lot of other, less important, apps on the same list. The https://windowsonarm.org list is a good start, but misses many items on my list.

[Dick Watson]

I wanted to give you my thoughts on a couple of the questions posed here and in your DM.

Q: Who's got the Microsoft Money source code?
A: Microsoft

Why haven't they offered the Microsoft Money source code up to world+dog in some kind of FOSS goodwill gesture? Why can't we do a GoFundMe and buy it from them?
A: Lots of reasons, I suspect. Let me categorize them in three main groups:
1) What's in it for them? How would releasing it benefit Microsoft? What would be their business case for doing so? Near as I can tell the only one is goodwill from however many of us still depend on Microsoft Money around the world. Is that 10,000 users? 100,000 users? 1,000,000 users? Somewhere in there probably. If you think Microsoft cares about generating some free goodwill from even 1,000,000 users, I'm not sure where you got that impression. They are a profit seeking missile, first, last, always. Giving code away like this is antithetical to them. I wish we lived in a world where there was some requirement where, in exchange for all the legal protections granted at the head end, products like Microsoft Money had to be subject to source code escrow such that rights to it are waived after x years of orphanage. It. Will. Never. Happen.

2) They probably can't just give it away even if they wanted to. a) it probably has code from other rights-holders who would need to get a vote, and b) it certainly has dependencies on other Microsoft stuff that they would be even less interested in giving away. MSISAM comes to mind.

3) Be careful what you wish for. The last significant refactor of MSM released in, IIRC, fall of 1997. So, it's based on tools and techniques that are 30 years or so old by now. It would require build tools that haven't been current since 2008 or so. (In its earliest incarnation, it was, supposedly, largely written in VB. No, not VB.net. How much of that survived the 1997-era refactor? I have no clue. Even if it was all re-written in C or even C++, from the PoV of getting it today and doing something with it that's not much of an improvement.) It's also surely a huge furball of code. Microsoft invested, reportedly, $1B+ in trying to make a go of "personal financial management software for home users". Bill Gates supposedly viewed this as a very important use case to drive PCs into home use. (Remember, this was before Internet P*rn.) That being said, a lot of that money went into trying to bribe FIs around the world to play along. (Remember, this was before they all invested big $s building web sites they wanted us to visit directly to see their credit card offers.) And what was left to actually develop the software was largely expended before 2003. (MSM 2004 was the last version with any significant changes.) So, that's a *lot* of code that was already falling into disrepair years before the last build we can see today. The "legacy debt" there is likely ginormous.

tl;dr: it isn't going to happen. I'm not sure what any of us would do with it all if it did.

On Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 5:12:46 AM UTC-10 JB wrote:

[Ameridan (microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com)]

Well stated, Dick.   I'm so appreciative of Microsoft parting ways with our Sunset editions.  As to point #3,  Quicken (the predecessor to Money) was sold to a firm that intended to improve the program,  but my understanding is that there are now more bugs and the program actually performs worse now.  "Many users express frustration with bugs, slow performance, and the subscription model" https://www.reddit.com/r/quicken/comments/vigz9c/beyond_dissatisfied_with_quicken/ 

[JB]

Good answer Dick W.

I get it.  Too many hurdles and a big corporate non-faced monolith!

As for 'I'm not sure where you got that impression' (about Microsoft being non commercial) I get that 100% too.  Whether they they still have the source code or not they will own the originating IPR; and it'd be a nightmare releasing that with all that goes with any underlying IPR and licensing embedded if it has any.  Technology.  Not my gig but get the 'furball' code too.  It seems one up from COBOL by the sounds of it!   

So without a weight of unknown users...it's futile expecting some form of Phoenix arising out of the flames.  100% agree. 

Now...'That being said, a lot of that money went into trying to bribe FIs around the world to play along'.  That's way deeper than my knowledge and experience and yet again I can see how it died a death through a thousand poorly managed marketing and budget spending outpayments!  It's such a shame.  

I watch the dialogues here as a newbie, all of which clearly show a real love for a product that just works(ed)...and to see how people are manipulating technology to keep it alive for themselves and a few others is just amazing.  I don't have the techno 'knowhow' to follow that path unless a blow by blow install script was ever put together for me to follow.    

So sad.  I've said before the software, for years, is so well built from a usability perspective. 

I think I'll try and capture and old PC (or maybe venture into the emulation sphere at some point if brave enough) with the intention of just to keep it running until I disappear into the Sunset!!

Having said all that...I'm still be curious to understand how many people still use it worldwide, obvs with the North American market being dominant.  I've a sneaky suspicion it'll be multiple thousands...maybe 100k or more. Interestingly, the banks are still offering OFX download capability in the UK and American Express dropped it ( they said no demand to me in a call some years ago) and it's now back as an option!  Maybe more demand that they though or a big backlash!!

 'Hey ho!' and 'Que Sera Sera!'

My knowledge grows with every post.  Cheers all.

JB

[N G]

I don't have much to contribute to this thread except for a couple of years ago PenFed revamped their backend and now SalesForce provides that part of their service. PenFed stopped providing ofx for download but  provided qfx and csv. I made a request and got ofx re-added! I was surprised they were willing to do it. Maybe providing ofx as a download is different than licensing a a server for Direct Connect? No idea.

Nathan