"Rik Rasmussen" <hrasmussen[at]nc.rr.com> wrote in message news:<eZxP$$8VDHA.1072[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl> ...
- quote -

Rik ..thanks for this post. I was able to fix my online missing payee
by doing something similar. Normally I pay and download all
transactions using MS Money online services. However I can also use my
banks website directly to download transactions. To force my missing
online payee back onto the explicit payee list, I deleted an existing
Money transaction and then logged onto my banks website and downloaded
it back into Money and behold the online payee is back !

Barry

Hey Ron;

I have sent them the info that I posted here as a reply to my support case.
The more times MS is contacted about this by different people, the better.
- quote -

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

- quote -

Brandon,

That's great that you have been able to reproduce the problem! Well done!

Since this is a public NG, I'm sure you won't mind if I pass this post along to
a contact I have at Money support (with attribution to you) so they can,
hopefully, reproduce the problem in their environment and, hopefully, come out
with a fix.

Best wishes,


--ron

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.

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:40:11 -0600, "Dick Watson"
<littlegreengecko[at]mindspring.com> wrote:

- quote -

I guess my issue is not so much entering every payee but rather the
disappearing payee issue. I don't try to add EVERY payee. For example, if I
have payees that get downloaded as HOLIDAY 12; HOLIDAY 23; HOLIDAY 45; HOLIDAY
78, I may have just a single payee called Holiday. However, if Holiday
disappears from the list, and HOLIDAY 67 gets downloaded, I can run into
trouble with extraneous payee names.

Your experience of manually entering payees, and not having them disappear from
the list, seems to point to downloading transaction information as being a
factor in the disappearing payee problem.


--ron

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:e7QZmW9VDHA.2164[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Where do you set these flags? (in M2003)?

I don't remember doing so (maybe I did this many months ago and have
forgotten..) but my payees get added. I haven't noticed any disappearing
either.
--

Aloke
---
to reply by e-mail remove 123 and change invalid to com

Maybe it's just been a long day or my surprise at getting wrapped up in this
issue in the way I temporarily did. Maybe both. Anyway, sorry if I came off
the wrong way.

I do know that it's relatively easy to answer the question on adding a payee
wrong and once you've not added the payee to the list, they won't get there
unless you go to some effort. I guess my real test on this issue is: are
payees that you have verified on the Payee page disappearing without the
help of the delete button. If so, by all means take on Microsoft Support.
(Experience suggests that you'll have to walk in with a smoking gun to get
far here, and that isn't right, but it is what it is.) Certainly the cases
that Tagman and Ron Rosenfeld describe sound like some kind of corruption. I
have never seen this, but add very few payees to the explicit list. I just
counted 1,086 unique payees as of a couple weeks back--I didn't do a new
MoneyLink query for this question--but only have 38 in the explicit list.
Perhaps I'm living a charmed life on this issue?

"Brandon" <bgilmet[at]new.rr.com> wrote in message
news:mPkWa.55117$o27.1152686[at]twister.rdc-kc.rr.com...
- quote -

I certainly agree that once added to the explicit list, a payee shouldn't
disappear. I'd also point out that the infinite variations on a payee are
**not** an issue when entering transactions the old fashioned way. Maybe
because I do it that way, I can't fully appreciate the reasons to add all
payees to the explicit list. As of several weeks back I have 1,085 unique
Payees and only maybe 50 are explicit.

"Ron Rosenfeld" <ronrosenfeld[at]nospam.org> wrote in message
news:9aljivoc9tncjtp51puv5lci950jbbkdfp[at]4ax.com...
- quote -

Mr. Watson, You come of somewhat insulting, but I am just going to assume
that this is your style and you mean no harm. I have been using money for
three years. (which is not as long as I bet you have used it, but it is
still enough time for me to have learned a lot about the product) I know
what implicit and explicit payees are and I always add them as explicit. I
have the option set to ask when new payees are added and I always select
"yes," and never, ever, "no" when it prompts me. I can see your thinking:
that I might have selected "no" to these payees that have disappeared when
money prompted me to ask if I wanted to add them to the list, but that is
not the case. Thank you for responding to my post.

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:e7QZmW9VDHA.2164[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 16:24:13 -0600, "Dick Watson"
<littlegreengecko[at]mindspring.com> wrote:

- quote -

Dick, the problem is a bit more difficult.

Perhaps this will describe the problem I see:

I download a number of transactions from bank, credit card and investment
accounts.

Especially with credit card accounts, sometimes there are slight differences in
the names that are meaningless to me, or long numbers appended to the vendor
name, and I would prefer to keep all the entries under the same name.

If that payee has disappeared from the list, I can no longer look at the list
to see if this payee has already been entered in the system (at the time I am
matching and accepting or changing the downloaded transactions). This is very
inconvenient.


--ron

And don't get me wrong: if you really want them all to be explicit payees
and you have entered them in the explicit payee list, they should stay
there. Personally, I've never seen one I know was there disappear.

Good luck with the folks at PSS.

"Brandon" <bgilmet[at]new.rr.com> wrote in message
news:k8kWa.49887$7O4.1154266[at]twister.rdc-kc.rr.com...
- quote -

Have you set the flag to confirm new payees? Have you said to add every new
payee?

It's not a matter of file bloat. You clearly don't understand the difference
between an explicit and implicit payee. The difference is whether or not
they are in the explicit list and show up in the pulldowns and attempt to
autocomplete. Many people find having some payee they used once and will
never use again in the pulldown and trying to autocomplete annoying. Having
one in the implicit list changes essentially nothing else except maybe the
ability to set an abbreviation. You can even store an address for an
implicit payee. You don't have payee fields of old transactions going blank,
do you?

I have almost 40,000 transactions and Money seem to be doing a generally
fine job of keeping track of them. (It did flitz out a while back and mangle
the file when I opened the file from my laptop over the WiFi when it was
already open on the desktop. That's why I'm a stickler regarding backups.)

"Brandon" <bgilmet[at]new.rr.com> wrote in message
news:k8kWa.49887$7O4.1154266[at]twister.rdc-kc.rr.com...
- quote -

I expect Money to contain every payee that I ever typed in. I do not care
if the file bloats to a huge size; it better keep track of every last one.
Yes I do want all of the payees on my explicit list. If I can't trust Money
to keep track of my payees, then how can I trust Money to keep track of tens
of thousands of transactions?

P.S. Sorry for putting you on the list of people who had the disappearing
payee problem. I see now that you were giving advice to somebody else with
the problem.

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:%23Npu3J7VDHA.3220[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
- quote -

My method only works for offline payees


"Rik Rasmussen" <hrasmussen[at]nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:OWp6B%238VDHA.1896[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I did find a temporary work around for myself.

I can log on my banks online bill pay and all my payees are listed there. I
pay the missing payee. Next time I use Money, the transacrtion I entered
online gets imported into my register.

I had not thought about the fact that Money is basically a front end for my
banks online bill pay. All new payees, transactions etc, I do in Money are
also online, and they don't seem to lose them.
--
==========================================
Henrik "Rik" Rasmussen


"Rik Rasmussen" <hrasmussen[at]nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:O4RmD2wVDHA.1600[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I have encountered the problem several times - have been able to correct it
myself via file manipulation...

Lets assume the vendor "Dairy" is corrupt:

Attempt #1:

1) create a new vendor with a similar name ie: Dairy-2
2) rename Dairy-2 to Dairy
3) if the system allows it (sometime yes, sometimes no) you will get a
warning message that the payee Dairy already exists - do you want to merge
the two vendors.
4) Say yes - ok to merge - the vendor is now on the drop down list.

Attempt #2
1) if attempt #1 does not work...
2) Find a transaction in your register for dairy
3) right click and go to the payee
4) rename the vendor to a name you will never use - such as dairy-xxx
5) create a new vendor with the name dairy
6) Find and replace all transactions with a vendor name dairy-xxx - replace
with dairy.

Problem solved - until next corruption...

Hope this works for you. If it does, perhaps dick should include it in the
FAQ for problems and repairs.
Rename Dairy to something you will never use - such as


"Ben" <email[at]benbrody.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ff839397.0307311238.555e492[at]posting.google.com...
- quote -

How many payees were you expecting it to contain? Do you have the "confirm
new payees" flag set? Do you really want every payee you've ever entered in
the explicit list?

"Ben" <email[at]benbrody.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ff839397.0307311238.555e492[at]posting.google.com...
- quote -

I just got off online chat with MS support concerning this problem.

They say:

They are aware of the problem.

A team is working on it.

They do not know when a fix might be available.

A relatively small number of users seem to be having the problem.

They are going to contact me next week to get a copy of my file to analyze
and aid them in finding the problem.

They did not have a work around to suggest.

In the mean time I will have to resort to mailing checks to the missing
payees so that my file is still bad when I send them a copy.

MS says the missing payee has to be recreated.

I am amazed that so many people are having a problem that really makes using
this product very difficult and more is not being done to resolve it.

I wish I had known about this before I invested so much time in setting it
up.
--
==========================================
Henrik "Rik" Rasmussen

"Brandon" <bgilmet[at]new.rr.com> wrote in message
news:YVYVa.46222$7O4.1072314[at]twister.rdc-kc.rr.com...
- quote -

I am frequently experiencing payees that just disappear from the master
list. I have read numerous other reports of this and I am wondering if
anyone has any solutions. I know how to get them back by using a find,
replace, and rename procedure when it happens, but a solution to prevent
them from disappearing would be nice. I noticed that the payees that were
added most recently seem to be the ones that are disappearing. I also, just
for kicks, decided to count the number of payees on my master list. There
are exactly 399. Could it be that money can not have more than 400 payees
and so it starts to delete older ones as new ones are added? Could someone
who is experiencing the missing payees problem please count the visible
payees on their master list and tell me if there are around 400 that are on
the list. Another thing that I thought might be a source of this
discrepancy is the upgrade process. I started with money 2001 way back,
then upgraded to 2002, and now 2003. Still the same 3 year old data file,
it has just been upgraded with every new version's conversion tool. Perhaps
something went wrong as the versions carried forward? All I know, is that
the disappearing payee problem is starting to become very irritating.