There is no simple way to change one security to another--and that is what
you will have to do. You cannot just rename one to the same name as the
other because they are already distinct things. Money assume they really
are.


You can go back into the old transactions and change the security they
reference in each transaction, one at a time. This would be similar to what
it takes to change the Payee on some old transactions to a different Payee,
except Find and Replace will not do it. Also, make sure the old transactions
really reference the right price/quantity relative to the new downloaded
data. Work from the oldest to the newest. It may whine about "shares going
negative at some point". The workaround to this is to enter an Add Shares
transaction predating all others for that security that is some huge number
of shares. Say 10,000,000,000. After all the other transactions are changed
to the new investment, delete the Add Shares transaction. You may have to go
in somewhere and remove an initial Add Shares or similar in the new
investment if 401k Manager or similar has ever been used to set the share
balance to the total share balance you had--i.e., to reflect the shares that
you had entered in the other investment.

If you want to "delete" the old name when you are done, just rename it to
some name that will never be used. Say "Never Be Used Name #1". Blank out
any symbol you entered for it.

Do this work in a copy of your data file in case you do not like the
results.

"scottkinsey" <scottkinsey[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B9255290-075E-4680-B536-E46593C29C5F[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Money is not being difficult, it is protecting you from making a mistake.
You cannot name or rename a new stock with a preexisting name because no
program can manage 2 separate securities with the same name. Even if you
delete a stock, the transaction history remains and that history uses the
original stock name, Money protects you from deleting the transaction
history which you probably will need for future reference.

If you want to name (or rename) a new stock with the name of an existing
security you must rename the old existing security first so there is no
conflict. It is good practice to name securities using their actual,
official names or symbols so you do not have name conflicts in the future.

Regards,

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ


"scottkinsey" <scottkinsey[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B9255290-075E-4680-B536-E46593C29C5F[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I am unable to rename a stock in Money because there is already another stock
with the new name. When I started using Money years ago, before you could
download transactions, I named the stock fund in my 401k as "General
Dynamics". Well, since I've been able to download the transactions, they
never reconcile because the 401k actually calls the stock fund as "General
Dynamics Stock". I didn't realize that mattered a few years back when I
started.

So, when I try to change the name of "General Dynamics" to "General Dynamics
Stock" Money says I can't because another stock exists with that name. Even
when I delete the stock entirely from Money, it says I can't use that name
because there is a deleted stock that used that name.

Is there any way to either rename the stock or force Money to realize they
are the same and reconcile the transactions?

Why is Money so difficult ????