Forced to leave his (Microsoft) Money behind

Mordechai is one of no doubt many unhappy Microsoft Money users who recently learned the Redmond company is discontinuing that product. “With Microsoft’s recent announcement that they are discontinuing Microsoft Money,” he writes, “I’m surprised that no columnists have commented on Microsoft violating one of the basic tenets of being a responsible software vendor. Microsoft has not provided any way for customers to unlock their data while at the same time not permitting customers to continue using their licensed software indefinitely on a ‘you’re on your own’ basis.”

Indeed the Microsoft announcement states that online services for the Money line of products — an important feature for anyone tracking stocks, paying bills online, or getting regular updates from a bank account — “expire two years after initial activation or Jan. 31, 2011, whichever is earlier; for Money Plus Essentials it is one year after activation or Jan. 31, 2011, whichever is earlier.” That gives you plenty of time to move to another product. But it doesn’t really allow you to bring your historical data with you. And many financial software users have data going back as far as this has been a viable software category.

[ Similarly, readers turned to Gripe Line when MPC Computer went bankrupt: “Grassroots forum for orphaned MPC customers,” “One man picks up where MPC left off,” and “When vendors go bust” | Frustrated by tech support? Get answers in InfoWorld’s Gripe Line newsletter. ]

“Users cannot unlock their data as part of a migration process,” points out Mordechai, “because, contrary to the impression given on the Money Web site, the built-in data export capabilities do only a partial job of exporting a user’s historical information from the Money database. For people who have been using Money for many years (since 1991, in my case) the export features don’t even work. Anyone trying to migrate to another platform stands to lose much of their valuable historical information. Microsoft has effectively forced everyone to abandon their use of the product (and their data) at some point in the future.”

While I was trying to get comment from Microsoft on Mordechai’s lament, I heard instead from Intuit.

Scott Gulbransen, a spokesman for that company — makers of Money’s competing software Quicken — told me, “We reached out to Microsoft and asked if the Money team would be willing to work with us to help customers move over to Quicken. They agreed. So we are working with them on making it possible for Money customers to port their data to any of the Quicken products.”

Since the two companies have been competitors in this category for years and only came to this agreement this week, this won’t happen tomorrow. “We are just starting to work on it,” says Gulbransen. “We are trying to get it ready by the time our 2010 product is out in the fall.”

Intuit is also offering a discount in its products through the end of July, hoping to coax ex-Money fans to move to Intuit products. But the discount is available to anyone. The details are on Intuit’s site.

Intuit’s efforts have done little to soothe Mordechai’s feeling of betrayal, however. “I’ve been in the software business for 30 years working on both commercial and customized software for Enterprise customers,” he says. “I’ve started two software companies whose products are still being used 20 years after I launched them. Responsible software companies just don’t exit a business without providing customers with reasonable options. Microsoft messed up by (a) not considering that users may want to save their historical data and (b) by not allowing users to continue using Money as an unsupported product.”

Making it possible to migrate to Quicken is only a partial solution, he says. “Personally, I don’t want to migrate to Quicken. I might want to export my data and load it into GnuCash (as an example). Why should I be railroaded into moving to Quicken just because Microsoft couldn’t be bothered to exit the business responsibly?”

Update: After I posted this, I heard from Microsoft:

Money has many features that continue to work after the online services have expired, though it will require more manual updating of data. As long as the product was already activated, users will be able to keep using the product after online services have expired. Also, we’re working with Intuit to help develop a file conversion process that will help Money customers more easily convert their existing data files to Quicken. Both Intuit and Microsoft hope this will be ready to go for the new release of Quicken this fall.

Got gripes? Send them to christina_tynan-wood@infoworld.com.