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The Finance Buff

Like a friend telling you about money … since 2006.

Download Price Quotes to Microsoft Money After Microsoft Pulls the Plug

by Harry Sit in Reviews
Keywords: ,

There is a small piece of unfinished business in my series for replacing Microsoft Money. After giving my requirements and looking at Quicken, GnuCash, and Moneydance, I came upon two OFX scripts for downloading transactions directly from the financial institutions, outside of Microsoft Money.

Those scripts will take care of the transactions. They will also update the prices for the securities held in the investment accounts that provide transaction download. However, if you have holdings in accounts that do not provide transaction download, the prices for those holdings are still not updated.

With the help of a book from the library, Learning Python, and a lot of Googling, I came up with a new script that gets the quotes from Yahoo! and writes a dummy OFX file for importing into Microsoft Money. Being a Python newbie, I’m sure the script can be made much more elegant, but what I have now works.

I tested it with Microsoft Money 2006. The online service in Money 2006 already expired. I created a new Investment account in Money called Dummy Investment. I ran the script, which imported a dummy statement with the current prices into the Dummy Investment account. Because the number of shares is set to zero (thanks to suggestion from John Brinnand), the import will not add any shares to the Dummy Investment account. It only updates the prices for your other accounts.

The script is very easy to use. You put the ticker symbols in two lists, one for stocks and one for mutual funds. Depending on how you set them up in Money, ETFs can be either stocks or mutual funds.

stocks = [“AMZN”,
“GOOG”,
“YHOO”]

funds = [“VTSMX”,
“VBMFX”]

You still need either ActivePython or Python. Then you just create a shortcut with

python quotes.py

Double click on the shortcut. Follow the prompts with a few more clicks and you are done.

Because it simulates importing a statement from a broker, Microsoft Money will only update the prices once per day. It’s best to run the script after the market closes. If you run the script more than once when the market is open, only the first price update will get into Money; you will not get the closing price.

With the Python scripts that download transactions and price quotes, I intend to use Money past its official expiration date.

Update: Since this was first published, other software developers created PocketSense and hleOfxQuotes, which greatly improved upon the rudimentary script here. Please consider using those. I use PocketSense now.

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Comments

  1. Grace DiVecchio says

    OK – After all the work, I’m still not satisfied because although the stock prices update in MSMoney — account totals, profit & loss per investment, net worth, etc do NOT. So since I feel forced to adopt a new finance program, can anyone tell me which is closest to Money? I’m 77 and the learning curve seems tougher than it used to. I’ve checked what’s out there and can’t decide among the top 5 or 6. Please help.

  2. Jim Clayton says

    Grace,

    I too am not ready to quit. If you have 5 or 6 options, I would appreciate knowing about them. I can tell you I’ve investigated Quicken (the worst), Portfolio Manager (out of Australia), Investment Account Manager (much more than I need – it’s spendy and appears to be for professionals). I’m currently looking into AceMoney and it has some promise. Too early to tell for sure.

    Like Grace, I would appreciate any information anyone is willing to volunteer.
    Feel free to respond directly to jim at jimclayton dot us.

    Thanks

    Jim

  3. Henry Alken says

    Grace and Jim,

    Which broker do you each use?

    I use Merrill Lynch and they give me an OFX download anytime I ask for it. The download updates all prices, percentages, etc as of the night before. There has been no interruption of any kind during the January 31 period. It only takes 4 clicks to download all the prices from Merrill into MSN Money Plus.

    I am a programmer starting with Assembly Language on an IBM 7090 in Greenland defending the good old USA. The last thing I need is to have to learn yet another programming language, be it Python, Moccasin, Rattler, Boa or whatever.

    I suggest you find a broker who supplies an OFX file for downloading your data into MSN Money Plus.

    When Little Willy Gates announced he was walking away from his MSN Money responsibilities, I looked at other Money-type programs and couldn’t find anything close to MSN Money in the areas of performance and ease of use.. Quicken is the pits.

    Bye the way, I am 78 years old and I shall do my best to look out for you young-uns.

    Henry

  4. Grace DiVecchio says

    My accounts are all at E-Trade and – voila — I just contacted my wonderful account rep, Jeff Rosenthal, who got their IT guy on the line who walked me through two clicks (count them two) to download all the data direct from E-Trade to my MSMoney Account. All totals and extensions and net worth info also got in. Unfortunately, he said that since Microsoft was no longer supporting the program, they would probably delete the link as well, but did not know how long it would take. Maybe a year he said. They also have a link to upload all the data direct into an Excell spreadsheet. So I’m good for now, but will still have to move to another program in the future and still will appreciate comments from users who switched. BTW – E-Trade also had a link to Quicken, which is in my computer, but never activated. I might just use it for the Portfolio and keep doing everything else in MSM. And you guys are super. Thanks for the help.

  6. Henry Alken says

    Ameridan – You are a genius!

    I tested your suggestion that a QFX file downloads the same as a OFX file.

    I downloaded my data from Merrill Lynch using the MSN Money Plus OFX file and saved all the information.

    Then, I downloaded my data from Merrill Lynch using the Quicken method and producing a QFX file.

    I renamed the downloaded Quicken file “QuickenWin_012011_022011.qfx” to “QuickenWin_012011_022011.ofx”.

    I imported this file into MSN Money Plus and the Merrill Lynch account was updated exactly as before. There was no difference.

    This information you have passed to us gives us much more security since none of the brokers will every stop producing a Quicken file. Many thanks.

    Henry

  7. Leo says

    The following has been copied from post #2 as it now applies to me. All of a sudden, the work-around for updating quotes does not work. It last worked on Friday, Feb 11, 2011, but not today Saturday. It’s been working fine for over a year.

    “I appreciate very much the work you put into making Money work for us poor souls left in the dink by Microsoft. I followed your instructions for downloading stock quotes and am getting the QUOTES.OFX . However my Money Plus refuses to process it: “the file you attempted to import appears to be invalid or contains corrupt data. Please download the file again. If this problem continues, contact your financial institution.” I have created a “DUMMY INVESTMENT” account which contains the stocks in the stocks and funds lists used in quotes.py. ” I might add that even the original script gives the same error.

    I don’t think I did anything to my quotes.py file other than to try to use it on another day. I even tried using a backup version of the quotes.py and it, too, gives the same error message.

    Any ideas? Could Python itself be corrupted?

    Thanks again.

  9. Leo says

    Ameridan,

    Wow, that was a fast reply. I’ll check your suggestion and just wait things out. I’m sure the s*** will hit the fan shortly.

  10. Luis says

    well I was trying to fix my Ms-Money today for the first time and I couldnt make it work… after all I think I was just unlucky to try it right after yahoo disabled this feature. Do you think this is a temporary problem at yahoo, or something that will last ?

  11. Perry says

    I had the same experience as Leo – the app was working beautifully for quite some time, and all of a sudden delivered the same message (“the file you attempted to import appears to be invalid or contains corrupt data. Please download the file again. If this problem continues, contact your financial institution.”). Please keep us updated on a suggested fix! You guys are life-savers!

  12. Hung Le says

    For work-around, you can edit the generated *.ofx file yourself. Look for lines with just the tag
    <SECNAME>
    that indicates there is no value for SECNAME. To fix, add a value, use the ticker symbol will probably work
    <SECNAME>AAPL

    Notes: I have NOT tried this myself. Please have a good backup so that you can get back to known state if something went wrong.

    Best,
    Hung Le —

  13. Hal says

    Hung Le is completely correct.. the ticker NAME (not symbol) has been left empty by Yahoo..Not all the names have been left out but if any are blank, MONEY does not like it..
    There is definitely an issue back at YAHOO and most likely it will be corrected when staff gets back to work on Monday… (WE HOPE!!!)

    Thanks, Hung Le for heads up…..

  15. Harry Sit says

    I uploaded a new version of quotes.py to fix this error from Yahoo. It’s still at the same location:

    http://thefinancebuff.com/files/ofx/quotes.py

    If you’d like to edit your file (because you already edited it with your own tickers), insert two lines after this line:

    self.name = self._removeIllegalChars(quote[0])

    Make it look like this:

    self.name = self._removeIllegalChars(quote[0])
if self.name == "":
       	self.name = self.ticker

    This replaces the empty security name with its ticker. I tested the change with Money Plus Sunset Edition and it worked. It will still work after Yahoo fixes its problems.

  16. Harry Sit says

    Sorry some formatting didn’t come through in the previous comment. You will need a tab in front of the “self.name = self.ticker” line and make it indent. Look at other if statements in the script for examples.

  17. Bill says

    The fix in post #55 works great!! Thanks for keeping this going. I have this page bookmarked and look here first if I ever have any problems.

  18. RonS says

    The fix in post 65 works ok. I am running the Money Plus Sunset addition and all stocks update as usually. All the NYSE stocks in the .ofx file has the stock symbol for the name and money had no problems importing the data.

    Thanks for the update.

    Ron

  19. Richie says

    Wow – glad I found this page….
    Am using Money’04 – and I tried the script and after couple tries did get it to import into Money and it goes to reconciliation screen for the dummy investment account I set up, BUT, it doesn’t update any of the security prices! Hmmmm.

    Well, after reading some of the comments that indicated can still get quotes online, I tried – and wow, I can! (I do have to start Money with a date about 5 years ago so the option to do online updates is there, but I can change the system date back to the real date as soon as Money is loaded up. I wonder if I need to do something like this to get the .ofx file to update the prices? Or is it some other issue…. hmmm; but, as long as I can get quotes online from Money that’s easier still than the script/python.)

  20. Hung Le says

    Richie,

    Re: OFX update. It is likely a different issue. It is my observation that for MM2005 and earlier, the zero share scheme (having zero share position in the import OFX statement) will not work.You will need force actual transaction: add/remove shares.

  21. John says

    Does anyone know if you can use the set-the-clock-back trick for the Sunset Edition? I have the 2007 version and didn’t want to go newer if that trick doesn’t work.
    ?

  22. Sterling says

    As we all know we can no longer get stock price updates in Money…I appear to have stumbled on a simple way to still download quotes directly into Money.

    I am running Money 2007 Deluxe….Go to Portfolio Manager….Go to Update Prices….then click on Update Automatically (every 30 min.) and low a behold all prices in your accounts are updated. Please let me know if it works for you.

  23. RickS says

    “As we all know we can no longer get stock price updates in Money”

    As of today, this is incorrect.
    I am running Money 2006 Deluxe in the US.
    …. and all stock quotes are still automatically updated daily.

    That’s not to say it won’t go away soon…. but it hasn’t stopped yet.

  24. Grace DiVecchio says

    Re post 172 — Darned if it didn’t work. and Portfolio Total Value continued to update automatically, as I watched. Thanks Sterling.

  25. Sterling W. says

    There is a much simpler way to update all your investment prices in Money.
    Forget the OFX files and dummy accounts….In money simply click on update prices….select automatic updates (every 30 minutes)….and vola Money will update all prices. This method worked for me in Money 2007 Deluxe.

    Seems much simpler…with no fuss.

    Sterling W.

  26. CD says

    I have not been able to work that approach.
    Have you ‘installed’ the ‘sunset’ modification? Tried that, had no joy, so I rolled it back & am resetting the computers date (back to mid-Dec 2009) to get prices to update (I do get latest prices).
    I have been canceling the the ‘update’ message when Money opens.
    My original version was 2000 which I kept paying to re-subscribe until the end.

    Bottom line is: If I allow the ‘update’ on the nag screen to load in will the Portfolio Manager Price Update work?

    Thanks

  27. John R says

    My Microsoft Money Deluxe 2007 is not updating with the 30 minute auto mode. I have been using the OFX files with success. The one challenge that I have is that when importing the prices into Microsoft Money it adds a day. So today, Feb 28 got imported as Mar 1. I can change the date on my calender and do to see the prices but it is a pain. Any ideas what I am doing wrong or what I need to reset to import todays prices at todays date?

    Thanks for all of your help and this great tool.

  28. Jim Clayton says

    Still trying to make this thing work. I have Money Plus Deluxe 07 edition CD. I foolishly downloaded and installed Sunset edition, thus “freezing” the price download ability. I tried re-installing my ’07 edition. Upon installation completion, it messsages that updates are required to work. So I click, and after updating the program, I still can’t update prices and my frequency to update is locked in 60 minutes – not adjustable.

    So, I’m back where I started, with nothing workable. If anyone can help me understand how to get back to my original ’07 working Money, I’ll try to update, install the dummy accounts, anything. Aargg!

    Thanks.

  29. Harry Sit says

    @Jim – What’s wrong with Hung Le’s Java program? It works with the Sunset edition out of the box.

  30. Mike Marando says

    Like some others have said and I posted I think back on 2/4/11, My Money 2007 Deluxe still updates itself every day – how long this will continue I don’t know.

  31. Paul UK says

    I am running MS Money 2000 Standard in the UK and have installed it on Win 98, XP, and 7 systems as I upgraded computers. The portfolio share prices failed to update on Feb 11 2011 and for a few subsequent days, but now 15 minute auto updates are working correctly again. I wonder if MS have rethought their plug-pull policy, or am I just hoping? Surely it would cost MS very little to continue support for share prices or perhaps users could pay for the service continuation?

  32. Grace DiVecchio says

    I’m running MS Money 2007 Deluxe and Windows 7 — and automatic Portfolio updates have been working for over a week. The Java script thing worked briefly last month and then crashed. E-Trade’s download feature worked, but you had to have both programs up at the same time. The “Update every 30 minutes” worked, but it was a few extra steps. And then “Voila” — I did not have to do anything and the minute I opened the program, all values updated.. I believe that MSFT decided to continue support, at least for now, and just not tell anyone. Typical. So I’m good again – until the next crisis! Sure appreciated all the feedback from this site. It kept me going when I needed the help.

  33. John R says

    I am using Money Premium and my auto updates are not working. I am jealous of all of you that it is working. It doesn’t sound like you reset anything – it just happened.

  34. whm says

    Quotes have not worked for the past three days. Keep getting the following message:
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “C:\Documents and Settings\\My Documents\MSmoney\Quotes\quotes.py”, line 291, in
    sec.getQuote()
    File “C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\MSmoney\Quotes\quotes.py”, line 117, in getQuote
    csv = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 126, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 397, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 510, in http_response
    ‘http’, request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 429, in error
    result = self._call_chain(*args)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 605, in http_error_302
    return self.parent.open(new, timeout=req.timeout)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 391, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 409, in _open
    ‘_open’, req)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 1170, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
    File “C:\Python26\lib\urllib2.py”, line 1145, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
    urllib2.URLError:

  35. Harry Sit says

    @whm – Download the latest quotes.py script. It will tell you which ticker runs into a problem. Go to Yahoo! and verify you are using the correct ticker Yahoo! understands.

  36. whm says

    TFB,

    For some reason, the script I was using that produced errors 3 days running worked today without making any modifications. Anyway, I downloaded the latest script and will start using it from now on.

    Thank you for the help.

  37. kasm says

    I’m getting the same error messages as whm in post 184 even with the latest script. Started having problems a few days ago. The ticker it fails on is not always the same. I have about 60 tickers and it seems like it times out after processing about a quarter of them, failing on different tickers each time. It think it’s a timeout issue.

    BTW, I like the new script that output the ticker and quote as it progresses.

  38. RonS says

    If you are going to be unable to update your Quotes for a few days here is a way to keep from missing them.

    To update stock prices on days that you may be gone make these changes
    to the quotes.py file. (I would keep a copy of the original quotes.py file)
    I Renamed the file to MyQuotes.py

    1) Create a new “_date2()” Veriable.

    Copy and paste these 2 lines:

    def _date():
    return time.strftime(“%Y%m%d%H%M%S”,time.localtime())

    and Modify like this. (Just delete %H%M%S)

    def _date2():
    return time.strftime(“%Y%m%d”,time.localtime())

    2)At the bottom (3 lines up from bottom) Modify follows:

    From: fileName = “quotes.ofx”
    to: fileName = “quotes”+_date2()+”.ofx”

    3) Comment out the last statement (so Money does not launch)
    From: os.startfile(fileName)
    to: # os.startfile(fileName)

    4) Save and close quotes.py

    OFX File names will look like this quotesYYYYMMDD.ofx. (quotes20110329.ofx).
    Each day will be a different file name with the date in the name.

    To make this work you will need to setup a scheduled task to run, each day of the week, as follows.

    1) Goto Control Panel/Scheduled tasks/add scheduled task.. This launches the scheduled task Wizard.
    2) Click “Next”
    3) Select the file to be run on schedule. (quotes.py)
    4) Select “Weekly” on next screen then Next.
    5) Select Start time for task. (Give a couple of hours for exchanges & Funds to up date their prices) I used 6:15 PM.
    Every “1” weeks.
    Select the days of the week (Monday thru Friday).
    Click Next
    6) Enter user name & password for the account you will use to run this task on this computer. IF you don’t enter a username and password the task will not run. (The user needs to have the privilage to awake the computer from standby). Click Next
    7) Click on “open advanced properties” box and click Finish
    8) On the next screen goto Settings tap and click on “Wake the computer to run this task”. Then Apply
    9) You need to leave your computer running in “Standby” while you are gone.

    To update your Money portfolio do the following.
    1) Open Money
    2) File/import…/downloaded statement…
    3) Select file to Import (Oldest file first) and Leave Money finish it’s job before importing the next file in date sequence one at a time.

    I used this too update 1 1/2 weeks of data over 2 weekends and it worked fine.

    Ron

  39. John says

    Do you know how I can download open prices from Stock Quotes Provided by MSN Money into excel 2010? Open prices are not one of the standard downloads.

  40. lull says

    I have downloaded Ultrasoft money link, now I am able to move data from my MS Money 2006 to MS Excel 2003. But how do I get MS excel to provide me the information in the familiar MS Money way. I figure this is really the Only way to beat Microsoft corp since they kinda abandoned MS Money.

  41. Charles says

    I’ve been able to keep using the Money04 Online Quotes to update prices (by doing the rollback of system date before launching money), but as of Mon Jun 13, none of my mutual fund prices are updating – only stock prices. Up until Friday the 10th (2011), both mutual fund and stock prices were updating.

    It looks as if the Money site itself historical quotes NAV is dated as of Friday the 10th and they only update once a week – I wonder if when Friday rolls around if online will update?????????? Anyone else notice problem with mutual funds using online quotes?

    I would use the script, but it just doesn’t work with Money04: seems Money04 requires a change in the on-hand quantity of shares in the dummy account to update price.

  42. lull says

    My MS Money updated the mutual fund prices, but doesnt give the percent change. Is the one week change correct for the mutual funds.

  43. R Tandon says

    Knew this was going to happen someday, after I learnt several months ago that MS will discontinue Internet services. Like most other folks here, I checked out AceMoney etc., but none were as appealing as MS Money. But for some reason, online quote updates kept working for me (I am an MS Money 2007 Deluxe user), until today. Today for the first time, mutual fund quotes have quit updating. I will definately try the scripts for updating quotes, using the method mentioned here, but I have a question.

    How will adding new transactions work? I.e. when I buy a new security, it typically went out to some MAN server to pull up the security name, symbol etc. At least that’s how I was using it.

    Please advise.

    Thanks,
    RTandon

  44. S.W. says

    R.T.
    I too have seen that mutual fund prices didn’t seem to update because the
    ‘change’ field for mutuals always indicates “unch”. After closer review, I
    noticed that the mutual fund prices were actually updating after I clicked
    on update prices and unchecked ‘automatic updates’ and then re-checked
    automatic updates. The field that does not appear to work is the amount of
    ‘change’ for mutual funds from previous price. I’m running MS Money 2006
    Plus and am relying on it to keep track of a portfolio comprised of over a
    dozen investment accounts.

    S.W.

  45. Mo Cup says

    I too have the mutual fund problem that seems to break all the Change values. Does this problem also affect the Total Return fields? Also can anyone here fix this problem?

  46. Harry Sit says

    I just tested this in Money Plus Deluxe Sunset Edition. Although the “Change” column says “unch” the prices do get updated. So do the market values and cumulative gains or losses.

  47. Mo Cup says

    I’m using Money 2007 Deluxe. The Last price for mutual funds doesn’t get updated automatically anymore. If I use a python script the price will update but the fields for Change and % change both say “unch”. Also in my Status Bar I have selected “Today’s Total Change” and that give a value of $0.00 (+0.00%) in this .mny file where there are only mutual funds. Shouldn’t the application itself compute these values from the price of the fund?

  48. Harry Sit says

    @Mo Cup – I’m only using the python script. See my screenshots. Note I have one stock and two mutual funds in the test account. The quotes.py script updates all prices, market values, and the Gain column. I removed the Change column because it always says unch. I also have Today’s Total Change saying $0.00 (+0.00%) but the total market value and YTD Total Return do change after an update. That’s the best you can do with the script. As long as the prices and market values get updated, I’m OK with it.

  49. Luca says

    Problem: updating today (July,2nd) all stocks appear as updated on July 3rd and becasue the date is in the future, the right “last prices” are not displayed. Looking into .ofx file i found the following text 20110703. How can i fix it (i’m not a programmer….)
    Question: how can i track EURO stocks/funds? should i create two different dummy accounts (one EURO and one USD) and two different .ofx files?

    thanks
    Luca

  50. Chip says

    For last couple days, the quote update will import huge price on some stock. Is anyone run into this kind of issue? I am running MS money sunset with Win7-64 bit.
    Thanks.

    Chip