Transactions taking a long time to save

[Martin Cole]

Since moving to Windows 10 some years ago I have suffered longer delays in each transaction saving

At the top of the transaction box it actually says (Not Responding) and then eventually (20-30 seconds) it saves.

Does anyone know why?  Is there a trick to clear something, or archive...?  I read on an old conversation about clearing old bills.

My data file is approx 65000 KB
Many thanks in advance

[Dan Adkins]

See if my article helps you out...
https://microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/eliminating-the-online-updatingdelays-and-errors-when-opening-money/

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[Nathan Giard]

Reading through the article at ameridan's website I  saw the info on renaming urlmap.xml to urlmap.xml_disabled.

So I dug a little deeper and saw that there are 5 files that make sense to disable:  (These files point to the moneycentral websites as well as others.)

misurls.xml_disabled
rooturlCDN.xml_disabled
rooturl.xml_disabled
urlmap.xml_disabled
urls.ini_disabled

After doing that, all the tabs that used to not work (Investing, Planning) now work, and the subtabs don't go anywhere when you click on them. Also stops the outgoing connections that the windows filewall blocks. I run MSMoney in Wine on a linux machine so I don't have windows firewall, but this is exactly what I've been looking for. Probably safe to delete these files if after renaming them nothing breaks.

Thanks for hint!

Nathan

[Dan Adkins]

Thank you Nathan.  I followed your suggestion, and can't believe how much faster Money opens up now!  I just added your suggestion to my article.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microsoft-money/8555f7c7-c585-4921-b2e7-85ab8277cb5dn%40googlegroups.com.

[Tom Roberts]

Are you folks all running Sunset? I wonder if I should do the same deletions...

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microsoft-money/CAN-yJuL2u-F_32uBP2MT3B3nc9TZu-CwoaVPD3a2voL%2BxLDvXQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dan Adkins]

I am.  I just renamed the files, rather than deleting them.  Off-topic article on some other files in the MNYCoreFiles folder:  https://microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/customizing-tax-categories/

[Dick Watson]

You may also be a candidate for "Nuke the Bills". It's ugly but I find I have to do it every four or five years. It's soon to come due for me. Not looking forward to it.

@Ameridan:

I know I'm *way* late to this movie, but I was just reading your page about breaking the "going home" network connections back to Mother Microsoft and have a question: is the firewall block being suggested as an alternate to or an addition to all of the webcache .xml and .ini file name obscuration?

I've always liked to think that all these zombie MS Money connection attempts to mama show Microsoft that there are still legions of us using their abandoned baby. (I wondered if all that telemetry was part of the reason for the, now equally abandoned, Money in Excel charade.) But, yeah, at startup these connection attempts are a bit maddening.

[Dan Adkins]

In my opinion, the Firewall block is the most beneficial move, and the xml renames improve the delays some more, as well as fixing the tab links.  After renaming the four additional files Nathan mentioned, my Money file (around 60 MB) opened up quicker than it has in many years.

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[Dan Adkins]

Dick, in all these years, I've never had to "nuke the bills".  I've got about 50.  The primary bug I know about is with the Home & Business Sunset discussed at https://microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com/2019/12/30/fixing-missing-business-transactions/

-ameridan

[Dan Adkins]

Dick, one thought comes to mind - do you have Investment Purchases in your scheduled bills?  That is the one type I've never used, so try just deleting only those.

[Nathan Giard]

Yep, running sunset as well. 

If anyone is curious open those files in notepad and take a look at the urls. Moneycentral.com for example, doesn’t exist anymore. 

On Nov 7, 2022, at 11:42 PM, Tom Roberts <tomandre...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Martin Cole]

I have been using MS Money for almost 20 years but as to finding these files I am a little amateur.  The delays in some transactions are really painful.

Can I get a little ABC help here pleeease

Martin

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[Wells Brimhall]

Although I doubt it's likely your problem -- I'll recommend one other potential solution that fixed this type of problem for me...

I run Money in a Parallels VM on a Mac.  Parallels provides you the opportunity to customize the # of processing cores available to the VM.  For the longest time, in order to limit the performance impact on macOS, I'd only given the VM a single core.  When I did that, Money would often hang for 30-90 seconds when I'd edit a transaction.  However, once I handed the VM 2 cores. the problem completely went away.

If you're running Money on a Windows PC -- this shouldn't be an issue -- as any modern CPU will have multiple cores.  But, if you're running it in a VM (on any platform), this could be causing the issue.

[Martin Cole]

Thanks mate but I understand multiple cores as like having a V8 only running on one side so I can understand if it is slow, how I would fix that is a mystery to me and I have a 5 year old W10 Acer that certainly needs to be upgraded to a SSD soon as it churns away doing what only Bill Gates knows!

I have renamed the following files with an X infront and it has made no difference so far

Martin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microsoft-money/351df83d-ffc6-4b06-88ef-e2672beafb57n%40googlegroups.com.

[Nathan Giard]

More clarifying info:

urlmap.xml is the file responsible for the links to msn from the toolbar for TaxHome, PlanningHome, and InvestingHome. With that file disabled I feel like functionality for those items is improved.

rooturl.xml/rooturlCDN.xml has:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rootlinks>
<link id="moneycentral">
<int>http://moneycentral.msn-int.com</int>
<live>http://moneycentral.msn.com</live>
<ppe>http://moneycentral.msn-ppe.com</ppe>
<dev>http://mcdevwbasn.redmond.corp.microsoft.com</dev>
</link>

The bottom line is interesting but it isn't live anymore and I don't know what it did.

misurls.xml is the big one. I won't post the contents here but if you open that file with notepad you can see all the moneycentral.msn.com/g.msn.com/passport links. There are some other links that seem like they might be important, such as:

<url name="Portfolio">money://navigate/Portfolio</url>

but as far as I can tell everything is working as I expect it to.

I'm curious if anyone has any insight into these items. Or if editing these files would be beneficial.

Nathan

[Nathan Giard]

I don't think you got all the files we talked about, but you got some other ones we probably don't need to modify. Try these and let's see what happens, they should be in your WebCache folder in the money installation. If you're not running Sunset then not sure what you have.

misurls.xml
rooturlCDN.xml
rooturl.xml
urlmap.xml
urls.ini

[Martin Cole]

Thanks Nathan, I will try these extra files shortly, I couldn't find the CDN file but will look again.

I am running Money UK 2005 ) with a patch I have to add each time after installation

If I can bore you with what I think is a funny story.

I started with MS Money US (came for free on Compaq laptops in early 2000s) and on a trip home to the UK a few years on I bought the UK version on a disk at the same time as a new laptop.  The data wouldn't convert due some weird incompatibility.

Bottom line is I ended up downloading all my multi FX accounts and investments into Quickbooks files and re importing them into the UK version with only a little tidying up to be done to re balance them.

Ridiculous!!

I couldn't move to Sunset (as is a US version) for the same reason and go through it all again!!

Martin Cole

6 Hanover Road

Norwich NR2 2HD UK

mart...@yahoo.com

+44 7467 346 401

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[Nathan Giard]

Wow that is a crazy journey! On the other hand, MSMoney is such a great value no wonder we keep this going.

To add a bit to your story in comparison, I tried using MSMoney a few times since the time Money 2000 came out, but it wasn't until Money 2004 that I matured enough to "get it" and I've been a permanent user ever since. Can't live without it, not willing to hire an advisor in its place.

Regards,

Nathan

[rustyfender04]

How do you make this work with Money 2004 on Windows 7 with MS Security Essentials?

[Nathan Giard]

Hi Rusty,

I don't know what the file structure looks like for Money 2004. Can you take a look in your C:\Program Files\Microsoft Money (or there-abous) and see what's in there?

[Dick Watson]

Sorry it took a while to get back on this topic.

I added the firewall block rule and renamed the 5x XML and INI files out of harm's way. My regular Money file still seems to spend a lot of time with the "connecting" arrows spinning at startup. Dunno what's up with this. FWIW, I have another Money file (for an estate I'm executing) that is just a teeny tiny Money file with no investments and only a few scheduled transactions (among other differences), and I don't notice it spinning at all on startup.

I do have many of the "offending" modules on the home page, e.g., cash flow and bills, so I'm used to any navigation to the home page being slow. Aside from the "nuke the bills" issues, I accept that delay because I want to see those modules.

I have 95 scheduled bills. A number of them (10? 15?) are just placeholders for future cash flow events that I can't otherwise schedule. (E.g., simple Deposit scheduled items into my primary cash flow account in lieu of future Investment Account Dividend and LTCG Dist transactions that would transfer to the cash account.) When the real transaction is entered, these "{cash flow only}" scheduled items get an instance deleted. I also no longer have any scheduled Investment Purchase or Buy Investment/CD transactions. I used to have a bunch of these back when regular income was flowing in. I do use the "edit scheduled instance" capability fairly frequently. I also have a number that are "estimate based on past X occurrences" items. I don't know if either contributes to the "time to nuke the scheduled bills" syndrome issues I think I see.

I've done nuke the bills three times in the life of my Money file, IIRC. Last time was about five years ago. I notice (or imagine?) that Money just gets progressively slower at many operations and my past experience has been that "nuke the bills" has a pretty remarkable effect at speeding things up. (After I spend several hours putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, that is.) I haven't tried it yet this cycle, but in the past, before going there, I've done a trial nuke in a copy of the file just to confirm that there will be performance improvement. I still have no clue what this really does or why it has the effect I think I see. Nor can I say why YMMV.

[Tom Roberts]

Thanks Nathan, that sped up my Money. 

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[rustyfender04]

No go here. I tried blocking Money 2004 from connecting to the web, but to no avail.

[Cal Learner]

rustyfender04: 

1. If you disconnect the computer from the internet, is Money significantly faster? To disconnect from the internet, you could pull a cable, or turn off your WiFi -- depending on how your computer connects.
2. DId you use the Windows Firewall to prevent writing by Money2004? What procedure did you follow

[rustyfender04]

I tried disconnecting from the web (pulled the modem cord from the outlet), but Money 2004 still acted the same speed wise.

I also made a rule in Windows firewall to block Money.exe from connecting online too, but the speed issue stayed the same. 

Could it be my file is too large? Is there a way to compact the file? 

[joe dempsey]

Noting down all your bills on paper, deleting them and re-entering them (yes, it's a pain) will definitely speed up Money by a huge factor

[Cal Learner]

Good point on the bills. Money is different things to different people, and I don't use bills.

If the file is a North American file, converting to Money Plus Deluxe could be worth considering. Money Plus has a remove-all-bills feature. If the file is not from North America, you cannot switch to Plus, and switching to Money 2005 will not help.

File->Repair->RemoveAllBillsData

This Remove All Bills Data feature would be for people who have
experienced their Money file to run excessively slow.

In addition, Money Plus has the multiple date-stamped backup files feature. That is really nice.

However, Money 2004 has advantages too. It was made to be less web-dependent. The help is much better.

It is possible to have Money 2004 and Money Plus on the same computer. But if you take the defaults, installing Plus will uninstall Money 2004. Also, the file associations (such as OFX and QIF) are set by the latest-installed versions

However, if you remove bills, before proceeding, make an extra copy or backup of your file in case you want to undo something.

The problem will be that if you remove all bills, you will probably want to add at least some of your bills back.  This can be done manually with the aid of the reports that you print out before removing the bills.

A technique that could help simplify re-entering your bills afterward would be to go your register, select a representative instance of your past bill, and select "Make Recurring" (Ctrl+E).  This would be especially helpful if the bill is complex, such as involving a split.

[rustyfender04]

Thanks, Cal. I'll look into this ASAP

Sorry for the delay in responding. I am having trouble navigating the new forum when a response gets posted.

[M B II]

I'm not sure if it was this thread that introduced me to the Nuke the Bills method in MSMoney, but I'll use it since it seems to be the most recent (vs starting a new thread).  

First I'll say thanks to everyone that helps keep MSMoney going.   Here's to 2023 being the year that Microsoft open sources it so we can really get to the next level on it (I'm not holding my breath).

• Prior to Nuke the bills: My load time was ~2 min every time I launched MSMoney or computer woke up from sleep with it already opened.  Also bill payments and certain trx modifications would take ~20 to 30 seconds.  
• Post.  MSmoney is now snappy and comes alive in ~10 seconds and no slowdowns observed on trx modifications.

My setup:  I've been using MSMoney for 10+ years.  Currently on Money Sunset Deluxe, win 10, mnyob99.dll patched, registry edit QFX2OFX from Ameridan, win10 to open QFX with C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Money Plus\MNYCoreFiles\mnyimprt.exe.   

The past couple years I noticed that when I open up MSMoney it would take about 2 min to become functional.  I tried the firewall block, removing things from home page, etc.  No major changes.   I also had a habit of applying minor paycheck changes every pay cycle to save and update the scheduled payment (not good as I understand now as it re-writes the bill data template or something).

When I did nuke the bills, I also took the opportunity to try and figure out why my file size had gone up the past couple years (like 60MB to 105MB with no strong reasons).  Using the compressed backup as my starting point after nuking, I'm now at a reduced file size of 75MB.

So...after all that commentary:  Here's the notes I took for doing this in the future.  I now have it scheduled as an every 3 year task.     Hopefully this helps others to accomplish or convinces them it's worth the hassle if they've been on the fence.

Fix slow MSMoney.  This will take a few hours, but mostly it is the re-entering of bills and that doesn't have to be all at once.  

1. Copy/paste full file to preserve it.  
2. Go to upcoming bills and deposits report, make sure deposits show up and save to excel.  Add column in excel for what the payment method is if you want to know that detail (Other, Direct deposit, etc).   You have to manually enter payment method.
3. File/repair to remove/Nuke the bills.  
4. Have money do a compressed backup (probably have to change bkup settings, current at 14day).
5. Then open this backup and save it as your main money file.
6. Re-enter all your bills using the excel file to rebuild and by finding a prev trx and make it recurring.  NOTE on loans.  When you re-setup a loan payment, it will ask to modify loan.  You want the last choice (to modify payment, not the loan)..or at least that's what I did in 2023.

[Dick Watson]

Great overview. Thanks for posting!

I'd add several things to one of your steps. You not only have to manually note the exiting payment method, you have to manually note 'Fixed'/'...varies'/'Estimate amount based on' and any frequency, days to 'Automatically enter' ahead, and any series termination info. Also, a particular problem is that the Scheduled Bills report makes no note of any series exceptions you may have edited and, IIRC, if the only series exception is the first un-entered transaction, that's the one the report shows and the underlying series bill attributes are not in the report. Finally, also IIRC, Paycheck-tabbed splits do not show which tab they came from.

It is VERY good advice to retain a renamed copy of the pre-nuke file. You will almost certainly have to refer to it to get your bills put back the same as they were.

My ad for MS Money Scheduled Bills in my use case: Bills, and associated cash-flow projection, is my single most important tactical use of MS Money. These also serve as reminders for things that involve money flow like RMDs, when first SS payments planned for, when the car safety inspection stickers are due, when I need to use the rarely used credit union ATM card so they don't cancel it, when I next need to renew driver's license, and many other purposes. (Over the years, I've had tasks/reminders in Outlook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, but these in MS Money have never left it or moved from one platform to another.) They also serve as templates for the crazy rich amount of memo data I collect on many recurring transactions (e.g., x,xxx kWhr of Utilities : Electricity). As of this writing, I have 96 Bills scheduled. Some of these (15 maybe?) never get entered as register transactions, they are just cash flow placeholders for other data that gets entered when the time comes. (E.g., you cannot schedule an Investment's future Dividend transactions as a bill. So, I have a placeholder deposit scheduled instead.)

On Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 7:44:07 AM UTC-10 mabro...@gmail.com wrote:

...

2. Go to upcoming bills and deposits report, make sure deposits show up and save to excel.  Add column in excel for what the payment method is if you want to know that detail (Other, Direct deposit, etc).   You have to manually enter payment method.

...