I have not been bothered by the slow performance issues reported by many
others, touch wood. And my backup routine includes multiple hard-drive
backups. All it takes in M05 is to click File|Backup|Browse|Filename you
want (mine are named "My Money Backup, My Money Backup 2, . . . 3, . . .4,
etc.") Can't get much easier than that.

You do have to remember to do the backup before closing the program, but I
have not found that to be a problem.

Susan

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:OTHrYLOkGHA.1552[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
- quote -

MMHV. (my mileage has varied)

I find M06 both lots slower and significantly less stable than M05.

"Chris Cowles" <spam_magnet[at]remove-me-bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:uD9QeyNkGHA.5108[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Chris Cowles wrote:

- quote -

M06 has the biggest improvement: multiple backups by default. You
can choose how many hard drive backups to keep. Default is four if I
remember correctly. I upped mine to 99 since the hard drive is big.

The filename incorporates the date.

"harrelsonesq" <harrelsonesq2[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:uIoSn2BkGHA.1640[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

It's M05 with an additional annoyance or two and a few improvements
including (potentially) speed.

YMMV.

Here's the deal with including budgeted/trended items: 1) the "account
control" where to forecast them in FCF is a pain in the ass, 2) if you, like
me, put most of the budgeted stuff in one account (Discover) *and* have a
scheduled transfer setup for some average or projected amount, then
including the budgeted stuff in FCF just looks like double counting the
scheduled transfer.

Note also r-click Hide in the FCF transaction list can be used to hide
budgets/trended categories you don't want messing with the FCF if you have
the budgeted and/or trended items turned on.

I'm probably, sadly, resignedly, in the same situation re. M07. It may only
be 60% of what a decent personal finance manager should be, but my M04 will
time out soon and I'm really not having all that much fun with the extended
trail of M06. Too many crashes, for one.

"harrelsonesq" <harrelsonesq2[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:uIoSn2BkGHA.1640[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Well. Dick, it was I -- as usual -- who was in fact missing something. It
never occurred to me to uncheck "Display amounts from budget or past trends"
entirely, so I was switching between the two, and neither was satisfactory.

I thought -- erroneously, it appears -- that, unless I had it autopopulate
FCF with one or the other, it would be blank, and require me to add items
manually. That was not something I was willing to do, so I never tried it.
I'm not sure why the option to use the Budget doesn't do exactly what using
neither option does. That was what I was expecting and not getting.

I used M04 for only a short time before upgrading to M05, and I have never
upgraded to M06, since my take on the comments here is that M06 is just M05
with an additional annoyance or two. To get to a version that treated cash
flow in a way that I liked and that did what I expected, you would have to
go back to maybe M00 or M01. I will probably buy M07, after reading the NG
for a good while to make sure, so as not to get too many versions behind, to
avoid file conversion problems.

Susan

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:e6J9LWujGHA.4344[at]TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Maybe I'm missing something or leading a charmed life. I have mine
customized to display scheduled bills and deposits and include estimated
interest. Two options. That's it. I get exactly what you describe wanting
but not being able to get. This is in M04 and M06. I've done the numbers
enough different ways to believe them accurate to the penny--until that
piddling amount of estimated interest is thrown in. The starting balances
match the balance for that day in the account(s) in question. Yes, if I let
it start throwing in trended items or budgeted items my results are less to
my liking. So I don't.

BTW, Susan, do you find FCF different between M04 and M06? If so, how?

"harrelsonesq" <harrelsonesq2[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:emPwOAqjGHA.3408[at]TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I can't make it work either. That is, I can, but it takes so much tweaking
every time that it's not worth it.

I just reproduced the problem with no effort whatsoever.

My main gripe with FCF is that it doesn't use the actual starting balance.
It knows what it is, because it says "Starting balance: $1,916.04" at the
bottom.

However, the chart shows a starting balance of $3,320.04. Obviously, the
chart is way off everywhere else.

After I fixed some obviously stupid items, such as $85 for gas when I just
got gas today and it was $48 -- it's a 20-gal tank, gas isn't THAT bad, yet,
it's less accurate.. Now it says I have $4,424.04. No I don't. The account
had $1,916.04 last time I downloaded.

OK,. so I changed it from "budget" to "trended" because it wouldn't even let
me edit the items when it was on "budget." Now I could delete the deposit
shown for 6/12, because I don't get paid on the 12th, and the real check is
showing on the 16th. What that did was make it say the starting balance was
($524.96) and go downhill from there. It took the 6/12 one out AND the 6/16
one as well. But it left all the payroll taxes. Arghhhh.

If I screw with it for an hour or so, I know from experience that I can get
it close to the real thing. The settings don't stick, though, so you have to
do it every time. This makes it absolutely unusable IMO.

What's so darn hard about taking the starting balance of an account and
subtracting the scheduled bills, adding the scheduled deposits, and giving
an estimated total? That's what FCF should do, IMO, & apparently the OP, at
least, agrees with me.

It apparently does something else entirely. I guess that's why god gave us
Excel.

Susan

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:OEqrsmojGHA.4368[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I'm confused.

You say you were using FCF in M___04___ and you find M06 lots different and
hard to use and useless to you and on and on.

As a dedicated user of M___04___, who's running the longest extended trial
in the history of M06, and a committed user of FCF--it's my prime tactical
management tool in Money--I'm defeated trying to understand where you are
coming from. I see essentially no difference between FCF in M___04___ and
FCF in M06.

I'm also at a loss what contortions you need to go through to forecast cash
flow. There's one link to get to it. It has maybe three or four
customization settings. That's it. What are you having to do beyond that?
You say it's hard to get the feature to work as desired. How do you desire a
cash flow forecast to work? Personally, I'd like the number to be positive
always. If it's not going to work that way, I'd just as soon it get the
numbers right given what it knows. The way I have it setup and with the
items I have scheduled, it meets this test quite well.

If you really want to forecast cash flow, the tools in M04/6 are very useful
and relatively close to perfect in terms of the way they work for what they
offer to do. The projected balance capability of M01, et al. and/or the
Bills & Deposits page showing all of the recurrences had very limited
utility in this regard. (One projected balance for one account is not future
cash flow.) Granted it was simpler. Useless things are frequently simpler
than useful ones.

"Mirthrindr" <Mirthrindr[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:581B0E32-B305-4564-B0DD-24859A5EACDF[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been pulling
hair out of my head for the last 4 hours, racking my brain trying to figure
out how to do this exact process, as I also used it ALL the time in my Money
2004. I KNEW I should have come here sooner, but I used to do it ALL the time
in MM 2004 and strongly figured I must just not be doing something right, so
just kept trying to find it. I cannot BELIEVE MS in their infinite wisdom
took this feature out?!?!?!

This new 'Forecast Cash Flow' seems completely useless to me... it is way to
complicated, and I don't need to see EVERY single transaction in my register
being used in the cash flow forecast. Even if there is ultimately a way to
make it work the way a user wishes, it should not require the user bend,
twist, turn, right click, click this, click that, spin around, tap your head
and say Microsoft 10 times backwards to get the feature to work as desired.

All I wanted to do in this case is put in my recurring Deposits and my
Recurring Debits (bills) and see a balance forecast in the same, easy to
perform manner I used to be able to do before I made the mistake of upgrading
to MM 2006. Geez MS, why are you SO consistent in disappointing people?

Jim

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

gatorinla - I am as disappointed as you are. I've used that function in the
same mannor you have for years. I loved it. It really helped. I'm really
missing it now as my husband is going from 2 paychecks a month to weekly and
I'm trying to figure out when to pay my bills as I have them all lumped up.
ARGGGHHHH... I'm seeing that it hasn't been fixed in 2006 ... MS PAY
ATTENTION! I'm starting to think about downloading Quicken to see if it's
any better.

See comments inline.

"gatorinla" <gatorinla[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B58C4A55-3570-4920-B53E-A46A06C5835C[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I'm using Forecast Cash Flow, not a report. I can see recurring items in the
Bills & Deposits, just not n of them. I rarely used the multi-select
projected balance, so I didn't really miss that. You must use it a lot.

- quote -

Every Windows UI guideline Microsoft's ever published has been violated
first by other product groups at Microsoft. Money is among the worst. M05
sets a new high water mark at that.

- quote -

I disagree that M02+ has no meaningful projection of future transactions. I
make very high precision projections using Forecast Cash Flow. It's my #1
tactical management tool in Money. With the exception of the hand-edit I
must do every week to my paycheck series to keep it from sextupling my
transfer to savings, I get very good results from it. I do frequently edit
series members as far forward as I can predict to increase it's fidelity. I
also did have to tune the customizations and tell it to omit several
budgeted items it wants to include.

I think most people have made peace with the capability in M03+. It's
different than M01, for sure. Some things are lost (the selective projected
balance is the most notable), some are gained (edit any of next 12 is the
most notable). My biggest beef with the redesign remains that it added many
transactions to the list of those that can be entered but not scheduled. You
keep saying you can't see recurring debits and credits as much as a year
into the future and that's simply not true. You just have to do it a
different way.

- quote -

MVP in this context stands for Most Valued Professional. It's a formal
recognition program by Microsoft for newsgroup participants. I'm not one.
Too much attitude, I'd guess.

i think you're running a fixed report that shows income and expenses and a
balance. You gave up all of the flexibility that you had in Money 2002 to
include or exclude credit or debit items at will with a simple cntl-click.
You also gave up the ability to see recurring items in your bills and
deposits screen, and let's face it, that screen is all about recurring items.

I've been into the Windows environment since Windows 2.0 and then 2.0a. I
made Windows 3.0 the standard on more than 5,000 desktops in our company (now
nearly 15,000). I can remember all of the preaching that Bill Gates himself
did about maintaining a standard GUI interface when WordPerfect moved to the
Windows platform and they weren't going to follow Microsoft's convention on
cntl-click and shift-click and other Windows functionality.

Ironically, this functionality was the first thing to go when the "gamies"
re-engineered Money 2003. In other words, you could no longer point and
click on items in their now limited bills and deposits list and see an
updated balance. While that functionality was re-introduced in Money 2004,
they didn't give back the ability to see any kind of a meaningful projection
of future transactions and it didn't return in the 2005 version either. In
essence, the bills and deposits function is reduced to a reminder function.
And as anyone can see from this board, it's functionality that people are
looking for ... the ability to see recurring debits and credits as much as a
year into the future and selectively include them in a simple checkbook
balance.

I appreciate your knowledge of the product and taking the time to monitor
the board and try to respond to user questions. I don't visit here a lot,
but what does MVP mean after your name and others on the board?

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Gee, I find with the customization I've done of its settings and a few
entries it wants to put in there that I've told it not to I get VERY good
projections. Granted, I did have to do these things with the customize cash
flow settings and a few r-click settings on specific things it was putting
in there. 6 months forward will be a little tough, IIRC, as it isn't one of
the settings allowed.

I agree we gave up something in this area with M02, but I don't find it's
near as much as you suggest. Maybe I use if differently?

"gatorinla" <gatorinla[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:855EA1E1-2C5A-4A24-995F-00D9BC62D701[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

This is my biggest aggravation with Microsoft. I've brought this up many
times and unlike some on this board, I keep current as new software comes
out. I did annual Money upgrades from 97 thru 02 when this feature
disappeared and I will switch to quicken before I'll be forced to upgrade to
a Microsoft product without this feature. Forecast cash flow doesn't do it
unless I'm missing something ... it appears to me that it was written by some
kid who has no clue what a checkbook register is and is frustrated because he
wasn't good enough to get into the computer game software side of Microsoft
so he's now turning my finances into a game. I don't need Money projecting
income and expenses for me ... I want to see things that I care about and
took the time to put into my bills and deposits ... and I want to see it
projected 3, 6 or 12 months forward and I want the flexibility to decide with
a point or a click the impact of including or excluding a payment or deposit
on my account balance. From 2003 forward Microsoft has missed the boat ...
and they've slowly tried to put some of the functionality back ... but they
are not there and not even close ... and forecast cash flow is completely
unresponsive to the need.

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Forecast cash flow. M02 changed this. See
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=34.

"jrfrantz" <jrfrantz[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5AEBE168-75CD-4272-9F96-E388679CF55C[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I recently updated from 2000 to the 2005 version. In 2000 you could see all
of your bills and deposits for 1, 3, 6, and 12 months. Is there a way to get
2005 to do that?