1.0.3-a Released

Version 1.0.3-a is a bug fix update to version 1.0.3, and can be downloaded using the link that downloaded 1.0.3.

Fixes many bugs reported on this forum. See the wiki for release notes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2013 02:14AM by dev.

OK, I've installed 1.0.3-a and have yet to get any quotes, but

1. the download did save itself as a msi file this time
2. the password feature does work now

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When running the program first-time, the Quote Sources don't show up as the ini file isn't created until the first exit, so I added this to the Help page

Thank you for updating Help! Hmm. They should, because PalOMoney is supposed to add them whenever it finds the quote sources missing in PalOMoney.ini, and the writing to the disk should occur within a few seconds after population of the Quote Source selector. I will look into this.

If you don't believe me, rename the ini file and start up the program.

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None of my internal quote sources work, so I proceeded in adding YahooExtQuoteCSV as a python external quote source. My PC OS is XP SP3.
This is a drop dead issue, it just simply must work!

It doesn't and neither does the Python quote source

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The first 2 sources are the live sources, one using the Yahoo Finance api and the second using the YQL api. The second 2nd and 3rd read the .csv and .xml files created by the 1st and 2nd and any external quote source you hook up.

What happens with the first (Yahoo Finance) source selected and press Update Now?

1 Does a console window open? Yes, but only for a fraction of a second, then it is gone.
2 Does the console window list your securities? No
3 Do you see quotes in the listing? No
The Yahoo Finance source produces 3 date and time stamped log files in your MnyUpdates folder, for example:

1 MnyUpdate_2013-01-24_01-25.log
2 MnyUpdate_2013-01-24_01-25_YahooFinanceQuote.log
3 MnyUpdate_2013-01-24_01-25_YahooFinanceQuote.csv
MnyUpdate_XXXX.log
The MnyUpdate_XXXX.log file is the processing log, which is more or less a copy of the console window. It starts out with something like:

2013-01-24_01-25-55=Getting 'Finance.Yahoo.CSV' quotes for Money investments set for Online updates.
2013-01-24_01-25-55=OnLine $INDU Index Dow Jones Industrial AverageA successful update would look like

2013-01-24_01-25-57=OnLine CSCO Stock Cisco Systems
2013-01-24_01-25-58=CSCO: updating 'Wednesday, January 23, 2013' now 20.62 was 20.66.In this case the stock was updated because the price for that date (which was already there) had changed.

2013-01-24_01-26-07=XXXXX: date 'Wednesday, January 23, 2013' not found in Money (closest was Tuesday, January 22, 2013).
2013-01-24_01-26-07=Creating XXXXX 11.02 Wednesday, January 23, 2013In this case, the quote for 1/23 did not exist. The closest was the day before, so PalOMoney created a new online quote.

MnyUpdate_XXXX_YahooFinanceQuote.log
This is a very simple log that shows the ticker symbols stored in Money and whether the source had any data for them or not:

2013-01-24_01-25-55=$INDU returned 0 Quotes.
2013-01-24_01-25-58=CSCO returned 1 Quotes.Use this to check and possibly adjust your symbols.
At some point, each quote source needs its own symbol mapper between ticker per Money and ticker per source.

MnyUpdate_XXXX_YahooFinanceQuote.csv

Ticker, Close, Date, Time
"$INDU",0.00,"N/A","N/A"
"CSCO",20.62,"1/23/2013","4:00pm"This file can be fed into PalOMoney at a later date to update another file, or another program that can read the .csv.

Note the correct time of 4:00 pm. Regrettably, Money saves quote times as 0:00, which, if you think about it, is quite wrong, since the stock had not opened for trading that day at 0:00. There is a one-day-off quality to this scheme. Perhaps we can fix this.

The only log files I get now are:
2013-02-15_18-18-26=Opening C:\Documents and Settings\Dan's\My Documents\Microsoft Money\PalOMoney\PalOMoney.mny...
2013-02-15_18-18-28=File Open Succeeded

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Updated 2-13-2013: Thanks, this was the key, although I didn't understand your post at the time. The double quotes were being stripped when the .ini file was read. Of course, this caused a multitude of errors. This has been fixed in 1.0.3-a.

I think the double quotes are being handled properly now. My ini file is attached ( the only alteration I've made is replacing broker account numbers - which shouldn't be part of the Yahoo quote anyway - with ****others****) for you.

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PalOMoney seems to assume that every investment needs to get quotes from the same source which is not true, unless that is what the future Grouping feature is for.

Overlooked! What you are saying is that, for some portfolios, multiple quote sources will be required. Indeed, for example, Yahoo does not seem to return the indexes. This would be handled by scheduling quotes using these quote sources, and requesting all the tickers from all of them. Besides not being very economical, this will not work if there is ticker namespace collision. Money has a prefix (e.g., "US:") which PalOMoney right now discards. Is this the namespace/quote source correspondence you mean? Can you give an example of a ticker and quote source? Do you know if Money saves a field to use as a clue re quote source? Their quotes source either worked, or didn't. We would have to add this capability fairly soon. For now, you can use an external quote source with fixed tickers as a workaround. The external quote sources don't have to use dynamic ticker lists from Money.

I have CDs from credit unions and brokered CDs as well, all showing up as securities having symbols that are meaningless to Yahoo, etc. and should only be grouped with their respective institution. Unlike Pocketsense though, PalOMoney assumes that quotes are desired for everything. With Pocketsense, I actually only use Yahoo quotes for 2 stocks and a mutual fund that aren't part of my Schwab and other portfolios. Sorry if I sound frustrated, but I've spent HOURS trying to get this working when in fact Pocketsense does everything I need already - I'm just trying to help you out :)



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2013 12:09AM by ameridan.

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When running the program first-time, the Quote Sources don't show up as the ini file isn't created until the first exit, so I added this to the Help page. ... If you don't believe me, rename the ini file and start up the program.

Thanks, the entries were being deleted after being created by one errant line of code that must have escaped from another function. Don't know how that happened.

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None of my internal quote sources work, so I proceeded in adding YahooExtQuoteCSV as a python external quote source. This is a drop dead issue, it just simply must work! It doesn't and neither does the Python quote source.

There was yet another bug, regarding Windows path names, spaces, and double quotes. If the Money file and the internal or external source both require quoting, the Windows command interpreter simply cannot handle that. It just strips out the first set of quotes, and the external program will not launch. See the 1.0.3-b Release Notes.

The bug fix replaces the quirky Windows command interpreter for internal sources. External sources still use the command interpreter, but an interpreter like c:\python27\python.exe does not require quotes, and will (should) work with any other paths. A future enhancement will use the command interpreter only for .cmd and .bat files, and will call other interpreters directly.

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1 Does a console window open? Yes, but only for a fraction of a second, then it is gone.
2 Does the console window list your securities? No
3 Do you see quotes in the listing? No
...
The only log files I get now are: ......
2013-02-15_18-18-28=File Open Succeeded

Right. It displayed 'C:\Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. This was the double quotes being stripped problem. MoneyPal never launched, so no log files from it. Fixed in 1.0.3-b.

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I think the double quotes are being handled properly now. My ini file is attached ( the only alteration I've made is replacing broker account numbers - which shouldn't be part of the Yahoo quote anyway - with ****others****) for you.
...
I have CDs from credit unions and brokered CDs as well, all showing up as securities having symbols that are meaningless to Yahoo, etc. and should only be grouped with their respective institution. Unlike Pocketsense though, PalOMoney assumes that quotes are desired for everything.

I think I understand. PalOMoney requests quotes for securities that have both a non-empty ticker entry, and the "Online Quotes" field set True. The Portfolio Online Status selector selects whether all, or just valid online investments are displayed when the control is set to Valid Online.

I am assuming the securities you don't wish to have a quote for have the mentioned broker account number in the Symbol column. If not, there is some bug here. If you are using the Symbol (ticker) field to hold a broker account number, you could set the Online value False and disable quotes for that security. Regrettably, I cannot find an interface in Money to disable the Online flag, but it would be easy to add to PalOMoney. One problem is that we don't know what the side effects of setting the Online field to False might be. I'm hoping there will be no side effects.

By the way, there doesn't seem to be any harm in asking Yahoo for bogus quotes. It just returns N/A or just nothing at all. Also, the real time quotes requested are unrelated to what is imported. As long as the result contains the ticker, the imported values are what the source returns that seems to be a valid quote. (Yahoo historical quotes don't return a ticker, so they are related.) This also means that securities quotes don't have to be requested by PalOMoney at all, and an external source could use some fixed list of securities that you may or may not hold, and it will update the ones you hold, and ignore the ones you don't. You can see what securities are being updated when by sorting by the Date field.

There are plenty of more fields that can be displayed, such as the CUSIP, and other stuff. However, for some reason, the cusip seems to be encoded, and there is no documentation on how to decode it.

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Sorry if I sound frustrated, but I've spent HOURS trying to get this working when in fact Pocketsense does everything I need already - I'm just trying to help you out :)

Yes, and thank you. Sorry for the frustration. You deserve some recognition here!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2013 05:08PM by dev.

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I am assuming the securities you don't wish to have a quote for have the mentioned broker account number in the Symbol column. If not, there is some bug here.

Account numbers are not in my symbol columns, but rather unique product id numbers specific to the Broker. Actually, the symbols can usually be deleted, because it's the internal encoded symbol that is actually used for matching. Couldn't you let us select account(s) - in my case it would just be my "Watch account" to group the securities that we'd like quotes for?

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There was yet another bug, regarding Windows path names, spaces, and double quotes. If the Money file and the internal or external source both require quoting, the Windows command interpreter simply cannot handle that. It just strips out the first set of quotes, and the external program will not launch. See the 1.0.3-b Release Notes.

Please activate my link for 1.0.3.b download, as you did for 1.0.3.a so I can test.

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Couldn't you let us select account(s) - in my case it would just be my "Watch account" to group the securities that we'd like quotes for?

Yes, the Online flag could be used for this purpose. You would get only securities with the Online flag set true.

The PalOMoney Portfolio View windows creates the list of tickers to request from the Symbols column in the Portfolio View list window, not from the Money file (which populates the list) according to what is being displayed in the list window. This in turn is affected by the filter controls.

The most important control here is the Portfolio Online Status selector, which selects whether all, or just valid online investments are displayed. "Valid Online" displays securities with symbols (tickers) and the update status set to OnLine. However, I don't know if you can change this setting in Money. I'll look into implementing a UI to set this field in PalOMoney.

Currently, the list is generated only from plausible entries in the Symbol column, disregarding whether or not the update status is set to online, relying on the filters to control what is being displayed. We could further require that the update status be set to Online.

Adding account grouping could also be done. However, if a security were held in two accounts, it would still display. This sounds a bit difficult for quick implementation right now. Account grouping is an obvious basic view that will be added to the Portfolio View and Portfolio Group selectors.

We could also add a filter for security types, and you could uncheck 'CD.' This would be a lot of check boxes, however.

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Account numbers are not in my symbol columns, but rather unique product id numbers specific to the Broker...

Oh, dear. How are they getting into the ticker request list if they are not in the Symbol column (for me to answer)? This is quite the bug.

Do you know which Money file field (e.g., mUID) stores the Broker's unique product id numbers (typically CUSIP)?

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Please activate my link for 1.0.3.b download, as you did for 1.0.3.a so I can test.

The .exe is packaged in a zip file, not in the installer. The direct link is in an email to you. We will send the link again.