But then you'd have the additional problem of putting it back into MSISAM in
whatever way trips Money's trigger.

"Art McClinton" <art.mcclinton[at]cox.net> wrote in message
newsUBJi.324839$dA7.105948[at]newsfe16.lga...
- quote -

Thanks for the follow up. As a programmer, I had considered that this would
perhaps give me the tool that I could use to hack the file structure and fix
it myself.
"Dmitri" <Dmitri[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F6464863-8AE9-4447-83AD-A86F52EC2A5E[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

The described method is not going to help you. This is not about fixing Money
database in a format compatible with MS Money. It is about fixing the
database in such a way that it becomes compatible with MS Access.


"Art McClinton" wrote:

- quote -

I too am interested in such a tool to fix my money database, but the $300 is
too much me to go out an buy it. I have a data base that nuke the bills
aborts on. Following the abort I have to go back to a backup file to have a
working MS Money. When I reported it to MS their response was to export
everything to QIF files and import into a clean brand new MS Money file.
Alternatively they simply suggested starting over and drop all of my data
back to 1997. Neither of the database salvage programs finds anything wrong.

It is frustrating.

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:uSXSx1X$HHA.3400[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I'm really interested by this but can't justify the cost of the tool just to
further my reverse-engineering and Money data recovery work. By chance, did
you/can you diff pre-/post- "fixed" files? I'm wondering if the "fixes" in
question are also something than can be done from editing the binary.

Perhaps we should continue this discussion via private email?

"Dmitri" <Dmitri[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0EC6DF62-039F-4A38-B888-B918D43712DD[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Well MSISAM engine is surely a variant of Jet, but it creates slightly
different headers in the database, that's why Jet cannot open or read it
directly. The Access/Jet/ODBC based repair tools couldn't handle that as they
"thought" the file is password protected (something is different in the
header) and so I couldn't get them move past the password prompt. The
AccessFIX on the other hand just sailed past the MSISAM headers and
successfully repaired the rest of the file, if any repairs were needed at
all, for a 12 MB file, it took less than 2 seconds to "repair" the file.

As for the database design, trust me in this; I am top level db guru,
working with and programming databases for 15+ years; this is just an
instance of very poor unprofessional database design which I wouldn't expect
from Microsoft developers, may be from a student learning MS Access
programming, but not from Microsoft guys.

Hope this information helps other people to extract Money data. My immediate
purpose was to get the data for reporting and sales analysis and tracking.
Money is just not designed for that purpose. I guess by "money small business
edition" Microsoft means really small business for people who need to tack
only a few things here and there.


"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Well MSISAM engine is surely a variant of Jet, but it creates slightly
different headers in the database, that's why Jet cannot open or read it
directly. The Access/Jet/ODBC based repair tools couldn't handle that as they
"thought" the file is password protected (something is different in the
header) and so I couldn't get them move past the password prompt. The
AccessFIX on the other hand just sailed past the MSISAM headers and
successfully repaired the rest of the file, if any repairs were needed at
all, for a 12 MB file, it took less than 2 seconds to "repair" the file.

As for the database design, trust me in this; I am top level db guru,
working with and programming databases for 15+ years; this is just an
instance of very poor unprofessional database design which I wouldn't expect
from Microsoft developers, may be from a student learning MS Access
programming, but not from Microsoft guys.

Hope this information helps other people to extract Money data. My immediate
purpose was to get the data for reporting and sales analysis and tracking.
Money is just not designed for that purpose. I guess by "money small business
edition" Microsoft means really small business for people who need to tack
only a few things here and there.


"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Oh, and stick around. You have skills that could come in handy for all of us
when we have to collaboratively and collectively get out of Money jail as
you put it.

"Dmitri" <Dmitri[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news405D93D-5148-47D8-A4AF-FA14AEAF6C21[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Thanks for the data points. Why was a $300 fix tool needed? Is the MSISAM
**not quite** Jet and this tool fixes that? Did you try the Access/Jet
repair methods?

I'm not sure much would shock me in their db design. But I also appreciate
that **some** of that may be due to usability/performance optimizations that
are sub-optimal in terms of nth normal forms.

"Dmitri" <Dmitri[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news405D93D-5148-47D8-A4AF-FA14AEAF6C21[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Well for $300 bucks + some custom SQL programming I finally found a way to
get out of Money jail. Here is how

1. Get FileBinReplace utility here http://www.softtreetech.com/24x7/script.htm
2. Run it as
FileBinReplace *.mny "MSISAM Database" "Standard Jet DB"
3. Rename *.mny to *.mdb
4. Use AccessFIX tool ($300; search the web for a download link) to repair
the MDB file.

Query TRN and TRN_INVOICE tables as needed.


By the way, when I saw the internal database design in Money, I was
literally shocked. That database was surely designed by entry-level database
programmers… students maybe… who had little idea about relational database
design, normalization or efficiency... Just for the record, invoice text
strings (addresses, customer notes, lines item descriptions, etc.. are stored
tin the same table where on-line transactions are stored, invoice headers and
details are stored in the same table!!! you get the idea about who and how
designed it)






"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Comments below.

"Dmitri" <Dmitri[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6DB350DF-BC8A-44A7-9A0A-5A22FE48DC41[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I said it would be exceedingly difficult. But it probably could be done.

- quote -

It surely hasn't been any better in the "personal" area.

- quote -

I don't know about the encrypted part. Supposedly it's MSISAM which has
strong ties to JET but none of the external public APIs.

Good luck. We feel your pain.

Thanks! SendKeys cannot not help here, different invoices have different
number of lines and there is no way to program SendKey to enter invoice edit
mode, scroll unknown number of lines, enter edit mode for each line and copy
text to clipboard, get out of the invoice without saving changes and scroll
to the next one and so on.

I am so pissed off with the internal Money implementation and the fact that
not a single significant improvement has been made in the "business area" in
the last 3 major versions that I will dump it as soon as I can get the data
out of this poor program. The latest task is a real problem, the Money file
has a proprietary encrypted binary format and so far I haven't found any way
to get the Accounts Receivables data exported or reported in any meaningful
shape of form.

Thanks for your time looking into this and replies to my messages.


"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Sound like you've answered your own question then.

I am not familiar with the * Business * editions, but have spent
considerable effort mapping ways to harvest information from the mainstream
Money Deluxe editions. There's much data that is just impossible or
exceedingly difficult (SendKeys style screen-scraping) from Money. It's the
way it is. Microsoft has exposed the internals to several outsiders (TaxAct
and Ultrasoft come to mind) but nothing generalized has ever been offered to
the rest of us. Short of a huge effort in reverse engineering, I don't see a
way. (The not-so-huge effort in reverse engineering I've already done was
noted above.) Perhaps if Microsoft pulls the plug on the product, we'll all
have to pitch in on such an effort. Until then, what you see is about all
there is.

"Dmitri" <Dmitri[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:37AAA16A-7FE2-4D65-804B-E296B85B5CA3[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Dick,

None of the standard reports shows this info. And this is a required field
without which invoices cannot be entered!

I failed to find any "customize report" option which would allow me to add
anything to a report other than canned and extremely limited set of fields
like account number, payee, category or date. The reporting tools in Money
are ridiculously incapable for any serious analysis, that's why I need to get
the data out.

Regarding the MoneyLink, I got that too, but this tool is only limited to
regular transactions and cannot export anything else including records from
Account Receivables account which stores the data for invoices.

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Create a report that has the data you want. Use the export links at the
left. Pick the format that suits you. Expect work to parse out and normalize
the data. Or consider MoneyLink from http://www.ultrasoft.com. No other good
choices.

"Dmitri" <Dmitri[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C818DA6D-E1C9-4A94-9CFC-95670556F23D[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Using Money 2005 or 2005, how can I export ALL invoices into a structured
file including the line item description field?

Or how to create a report that shows this important field and than export
the report to a file?

Or how to access invoices as a database table within the money file?

I don't care about the export format as long as it is structured and can be
loaded into Excel or anything else. I cannot use the multi-line crap created
by Save Invoice to Text File feature witch is virtually useless and requires
saving each invoice individually. I got thousands of invoices and cannot use
that method.