Knowledge Base

The contents are missing, incorrect, or old in MSN Money Portfolio Manager

Article ID: 213873

Article Last Modified on 1/30/2007

APPLIES TO

MSN Money
MSN Money Plus

This article was previously published under Q213873

SYMPTOMS

When you view your portfolio in MSN Money Investing, you may experience one or more of the following symptoms:

Portfolio Manager contents may be missing, incorrect, or outdated.
You may see only the Sample accounts listed in the Portfolio Manager window.
You may see only your MSN shared stock list account (MSN Stock List).
You may be prompted to create a portfolio.

Note If the Common Tasks and Other Tasks items are missing to the left of Portfolio Manager, you must reinstall the Deluxe Portfolio.

For more information about how to remove and reinstall MSN Money Deluxe Portfolio, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

176841 How to remove and reinstall the MSN Money Investing components

CAUSE

This issue may occur if one of the following conditions is true:

You signed in to a different Microsoft Passport Network account or signed up for a new Passport Network account that is not associated to your portfolio data file.
You must reset the connection to the MSN Money Investing Web site.
You changed or upgraded your browser.
You opened two or more instances of Portfolio Manager, and one instance overwrote the changes that you made in the other instance.
The browser may report an invalid UserAgent string.
The portfolio data file is damaged.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, use the appropriate method that addresses the cause of the issue.

You signed in by using a different Passport Network account

Sign out of the current Passport Network and then sign back in to Passport Network by using the name and the password that you originally used to gain access to your Portfolio data file.

Even though your Passport Network name is in the form of an e-mail address, it is not directly linked to your actual e-mail address (unless you are using hotmail.com or msn.com). Therefore, even if you have a new e-mail address, you can still use the old address as your Passport Network sign-in name to access the portfolio data associated to that Passport Network name.

If you want help determining if you have created other Passport Network accounts, contact Passport Network support. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://memberservices.passport.com

Reset the Web site Connection to the MSN Money Investing Web site

To reset your connection to the MSN Money Investing Web site, disconnect from the Internet, restart your computer, and then connect to the following MSN Web site:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor

Note Update any shortcut, favorite, or bookmark that you use to connect to Portfolio Manager.

Browser Changed or Upgraded

When you upgrade or change the browser that you use, the default location of your data file may change, and Portfolio Manager cannot locate your most recent data file.

You can find and restore your old data file or restore a backup data file. For more information about how to do this, see the "More Information" section.

Note To use the Deluxe version of Portfolio Manager, you must have Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or in Windows Internet Explorer 7.

Two or more instances of Portfolio Manager are open

MSN Money Investing saves the changes you make in Portfolio Manager when you either refresh your browser or click another area inside MSN Money Investing. If you open more than one instance of Portfolio Manager, you can unintentionally overwrite changes that you made.

If you try to overwrite the data file, you receive the following warning message:

Another instance of the browser has already saved to the datafile in MSN Money Investing. Do you want to replace the saved data with the data in this portfolio? All previously saved data will be overwritten.

Follow the steps in the "More Information" section to see if you can find and restore a data file that contains the data you want.

To prevent this issue, do not run multiple instances of Portfolio Manager.

Browser reports an invalid user string

To check the Value of the UserAgent string that your browser reports, visit the following MSN Web site:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/inc/admin/general/httphead.asp

If the UserAgent is not valid or is not readable, quit your browser, disconnect from the Internet, and then restart your computer.

If the issue continues to occur, upgrade or reinstall your browser. To upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://microsoft.com/ie/download

Damaged data file

Follow the steps in the More Information section to find and restore a data file that contains the data that you want.

MORE INFORMATION

Determine where your MSN Money files are stored on your computer

To determine where your data file is stored and what it is currently named, follow these steps:

In Portfolio Manager, in the Other tasks section, click More.
Click About Portfolio Manager.

Determine the version of MSN Money Investing that you are using

You are using the Deluxe (ActiveX) version of MSN Money Investing if you can see the Common Tasks and Other Tasks options to the left of Portfolio Manager. If you do not see these options, you are using the Basic (HTML) version of the MSN Money Investing Web site. In the Basic version, you gain access to your data file that is stored on the server by signing in to the Passport Network account that is associated to your data.

Find where Portfolio Manager saves the default data file for the ActiveX version of MSN Money Investing

To find where your data file is stored and what it is currently named, follow these steps:

In Portfolio Manager, in the Other tasks section, click More.
Click About Portfolio Manager.

Record the path location of your files.

Find the MSN Money Investing Data Files

To find the data files for MSN Money Investing:

Back up the current data file. If you restore a Backup file, you replace the current data file. For more information about how to back up your MSN Money data, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

164062 How to back up or restore MSN Money Portfolio data
Open the following MSN Money Investing Home page:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/home.asp
Search for the data file. To do this, follow these steps, as appropriate for your operating system.

On a computer that is running Windows Vista
1. Click Start, and then click in the Start Search box.
2. Type the following line:
  
  *.mny, *.mbf
  
  This searches for any current data files and any backup files that you have made.
On a computer that is running Windows XP or an earlier version of Windows
1. On the Windows task bar, click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders
2. In the Named box, type the following line:
  
  *.mny, *.mbf
  
  This searches for any current data files and any backup files that you have made.
In the list of found files, note the name and the location of each file that was found. You can restore any one of these files in Portfolio Manager.

Restore an MSN Money Investing ActiveX data file

Open Portfolio Manager.
Click More, and then click File options.
Click Restore Backup.
In the Look in box, click the folder that contains the file that you want to restore.
Click the file that you want, and then click Open.

Additional query words: MoneyCentral investor inv online money central back up lost

Keywords: kbmoneyweb kbmoneyinvest kbprb KB213873

Microsoft KB Archive/213873

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