In microsoft.public.money, Jonathan Altman wrote:

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If there is a really positive word for the QIF method, it is
"clean". Consider that not even the security symbols make it thru
that process. No budgets, bills, etc. The good news is that you
could try it without destroying your regular file; just use a
different filename. Note that when you create your empty file to QIF
to, you can select Decline to not have a Passport/LiveID on the
file. File-> New....


If you want to do the QIF export/import, I would follow the steps
in http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;178830
except in the first step 4, I would suggest this: start the name of
the QIF file for the investment accounts with an underscore (_),
and start the name of QIF files for the cash accounts associated
with the investments with a letter. Thus you might have
_BrownInvestment.qif and BrownInvestmentCash.qif. This would cause
the investment account to be processed prior to the associated cash
account. When the BrownInvestment got created, you would specify
that you want to track the cash transactions. Then specify that
the cash transactions account for BrownInvestment was where the
BrownInvestmentCash.qif transactions get sent.

Then File-> Import ALL AT ONCE using Ctrl+<click> to select files.
Specify "New or Recovered" account when asked.

Of course you will use a different filename for the new file, and
you will have both versions to choose from when done. I would also
set up the backups to make sure they are using different names.

That said, I would try the Money 2007 trial. If the conversion
eliminates the hidden transactions, I don't envision a timebomb in
your file.

I'm planning to upgrade to 2007...i just wanted to get all of my ducks in a
row in the current version before making the change. In other words, i want
to make sure i don't have any major account/file issues before upgrading.

As tedious as it is, i'm actually willing to do the manual copy/paste
process if it fixes the problem (which it seems to - i did another one of the
2 accounts last night where that problem was happening and it seems okay). My
only fear is that by doing this and then deleting the old accounts, i might
be leaving some residual information in the .mny file that might screw me up
later. If the QIF approach will result in a cleaner file, i'll do that, but
if you think by copy/pasting an entire account and then deleting the old
account (once it's empty of all transactions) will NOT creating any "hidden
transactions" or other potential file issues, i'll keep going down that road.

In microsoft.public.money, Jonathan Altman wrote:

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I could give you a different writeup similar to the tedious method 3
of that KB article. There could be some shortcutting in that you may
know about when the problem appeared. There is another thing that is
likely to help. Upgrade to Money 2007. I know that when this problem
first appeared in Money 2004, that upgrading to Money 2005 would do
it.

If you would like to try that out, download the free 90 day trial
and use both in parallel. Copy your current Money file to a
different name, such as Jonathan07.mny, and let Money 2007 convert
that copy. Stay alert during install to make sure the trial does
not uninstall your Money version. Expect a radio button where you
will need to change from the default. You should be able to run
both versions, one at a time.

You might be better off to restore a backup from before you added
too many attempted fixes.

If you decide to stay with the older version of Money, after trying
2007, I suggest you do not uninstall the trial if you want to later
continue with Money 2004. Uninstall of Money 2007 will make
earlier versions stop working also. That file association thing is
the thing that routes a QIF or OFX to the given version of Money
when you click on such a file. That can be changed without
reinstalling.

You could also install Money 2007 trial on a different computer to
test to see if it will do what you need.

If you decide to stay with Money 2007, it is generally better to get
a DVD at a retail store. Your favorite big-box membership store
probably has Deluxe without rebate for under 25.

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If you do the QIF thing, it is important to import all files at the
same time using Ctrl+<click> to select. Still, it is going to lose
some things that your regular file had.

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Yes - the balance does differ when only showing unreconciled transactions in
the account where i am having cash balance issues.

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I agree that it's pretty drastic, but i couldn't get comfortable that other
approaches would actually capture transactions (including transfers between
accounts) correctly.

In microsoft.public.money, Jonathan Altman wrote:

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Please say if any of the Money 2004 registers give different a
balance when the View is changed to show only unreconciled
transactions or in some other way?


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That sounds pretty darned drastic. If you did have to recreate the
accounts, I would use QIF export and import.

I would also consider some other action instead, but things,
including what you write below, would depend somewhat on the answer
to the question.

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"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

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Unfortunately none of these approaches worked. What i ended up doing was
creating a new account, cutting and pasting all of the transactions from the
account with the cash balance issue over to the new account (had to do this
one by one - very painful, especially since i'm going to have to do it for 2
additional accounts where i'm having the same problem) and then deleting the
old account. If there's a better way to fix this, PLEASE let me know as this
manual account recreation is very tedious. Furthermore, in the other 2
accounts it's likely to be even more difficult since when i try to cut and
paste certain transactions, i'm prevented from doing so. For example, when i
try to cut the initial "buy" transaction for a security to the new account,
i'm told i can't do that as there is already a "sell" transaction associated
with that buy.

The additional remaining issue that i'd like help with on this is
understanding how to avoid the problem in the first case. It results from
situations where i allow Money to "match" a downloaded transaction, typically
a transfer where it matches the withdrawal and deposit as a single
transaction. Why does this create an incorrect balance in the account?