On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 08:27:09 -0800, "Carl" <cmaynard1[at]cox.net> wrote:

- quote -

Are there minor differences in the different Walmart's? If so, unless you
change them at the time you "match them", you may be getting different payees
that way. There's an option to confirm new payees.

BTW, the disappearing payee problem will also results in duplicate payees which
you can find when you do a Search for a specific payee.


--ron

In microsoft.public.money, Carl wrote:

- quote -

I think the one you want is
Tools-> Options-> Editing-> ConfirmNewPayees

Thanks for the feedback. I have the opposite problem from
this user, though. My payees don't disappear, they just
keep appending to the list. I do not download transactions
from the bank - all of my entries are manual.
I will uncheck the "Replace downloaded payee names with
user-altered names when available" option just on the
chance that the two issues are connected.

Thanks

- quote -

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 12:13:24 -0800, "Carl" <cmaynard1[at]cox.net> wrote:

- quote -

Here is a copy of a previous post regarding this issue:

================================
On Sun, 03 Aug 2003 09:53:21 GMT, "Brandon" <bgilmet[at]new.rr.com> wrote:

I have duplicated and solved the disappearing payee problem. I have worked
on the issue for the past day and a half. I tried many things to figure it
out, but I finally found the combination of events that is necessary to get
the program to make a payee mysteriously vanish from the explicit list. I
can now make any payee vanish from the explicit list at will by doing a
certain combination of things.



The conditions that are required to duplicate the vanishing payee problem
are as follows:



1.. You must have the option in money 2003 under the "Online Services" tab
that reads "Replace downloaded payee names with user-altered names when
available" selected.


2.. You download a transaction that your bank has given the EXACT same
name as a payee in your master list in MS Money (Explanation: say you have a
payee in your Money file called "Tom's Diner" ; a lot of times when you
download a statement from your bank it will have a weird looking name like
"TomDin#2347", but sometimes the name may EXACTLY match the name that is in
your Money file's explicit list. I.E. the downloaded transaction will also
have the name "Tom's Diner" and be spelled EXACTLY the same as the way you
have it spelled in your explicit payee list. This is when the problem
occurs)




3.. You accept that downloaded transaction when it is matched to a
previously manually entered transaction.


When these conditions are met, the payee will vanish off of the explicit
list and become implicit immediately after accepting the transaction. There
is then no way to make the payee become explicit again, except for a rename
and find/replace technique that is a pain.



This is definitely a bug, but for now I have found two work arounds to
prevent payees from vanishing.



Work around 1:



Deselect the option under the "Online Services" tab that reads "Replace
downloaded payee names with user-altered names when available"



The benefit that is lost by deselecting this option: When Money downloads a
transaction into an account register that does not have any matching
transaction to go with it, Money will not automatically alias a preferred
payee name from the preferred payee names database. You will either have to
change the payee name to the one that you want to use before you accept the
transaction, or you can just accept the transaction with whatever name is
downloaded from your financial institution.



***If you do your accounting the way that I do, having this option
deselected will not usually affect you. I always have transactions that I
have first manually entered into Money to match to the downloaded
transactions before I download a statement. When this is done, the name
that was assigned to the transaction when I entered it manually will stick.
The option to be deselected was designed more so for people that do not
enter their transactions manually before downloading a statement to
reconcile against them. Instead they like to save time by having Money
create and reconcile their transactions simultaneously when the accept
button is selected on their downloaded transactions.





Work around 2: (if you desire to keep the "Replace downloaded payee names
with user-altered names when available" option selected)



Rename the payees in your Money file to names that are very unlikely to ever
be exactly the same as the payees that your financial institution assigns.
This will not affect transaction matching very much. Money can still do a
good job at matching downloaded transactions even though the payee names may
not be spelled identically. Things like dates, amounts, check numbers, etc.
still let Money be quite accurate when matching downloaded transactions. In
addition, when you do match an unequal name for the first time, Money will
then add that name to the payee names variation list for that payee, so that
future matches for that payee will be even easier for Money to cipher. A
simple way to change the payee names in your money file to accomplish this
work around would be to append all of them with a special character like one
of these "~$%^*&*!+" So instead of calling a payee "Tom's Diner" call it
"Tom's Diner*". This work around will not work for online enabled payees,
because their names are locked after the first payment to them is made, but
when creating future online payee names you can give this some consideration
before deciding on a name for them.



If you follow these steps, you can stop payees from disappearing from your
explicit list.

====================================
--ron

In Money 2002, when I select a payee already on my list to
add a transaction (ex. 'Wal-Mart'), the application will
sometimes, not always, add another instance of that payee.
In other words, if I add 5 transactions for Wal-Mart, I
end up with 5 separate listings of Wal-Mart under my payee
list! I never had this problem with Money 98 . . .

Any ideas would be appreciated. I'm using an OEM (Gateway)
supplied version.
..