How to Export Files From Microsoft Money

Microsoft's end-of-life plan for the Money line of products includes the Money Sunset Edition (link in Resources). Because Microsoft Money relied on a subscription model and Microsoft disabled the activation server in 2011, it's possible that your old version of Money will not start. The Sunset Edition no longer needs a connection to Microsoft's Web services to run. Download the version that's appropriate for the prior version of Money you had and run the installer.

Launch Money Sunset Edition and then click on "File" and then "Open" and navigate to the location of any *.mny files you may have had from prior installations. Select the files and click "Open." If you installed Money Sunset Edition in the default installation directories set by its installer, the "File" and "Open" steps should put you in the same directory as the data files used by the prior version. Money can also import QIF files from Quicken, which may be handy if you're using this export procedure to consolidate multiple accounts from multiple computer systems.

Microsoft Money exports to Quicken Interchange Format (*.qif). You will have to export the files for each account one at a time, and Microsoft's recommendation is to make a list of all accounts and check them off as you export. To export to Quicken Interchange Format, select "File" then "Export," select "Loose QIF" and then click "OK." You'll be prompted to name the exported file and to select the account type (regular or investment). Lastly, choose the specific account from the list of imported accounts in Money and click "Continue." After Money exports the data, click "OK."

Quicken Interchange Format has some limitations that Money doesn't share. Any non-standard characters are replaced with "#" and any category names longer than 15 letters long will be truncated. While Money supports "voided" as a transaction type, these are converted to values of "$0.00" when exported. Money will only use the first categorization attached to a transaction and any additional categorizations will be removed on export.

While full account information can't be exported from Money to Excel, you can export Money reports into a file Excel can read. Open Money, load the account file, and then open the report you want to export. Right-click the report on the screen and select "Export." Set the location for where you want the file to export to, name the file, and click "OK." The file will be a tab delimited text file. To open it in Excel, create a blank workbook, click on the "Data" tab, and select "Import External Data." Walk through the dialogs and load the file you created, making sure you choose "tab delimited" as the file type.