redundant files

[Mary Kennedy]

I have been using FM for a million years. I have upgraded every time there is an upgrade. I have also changed computers multiple times. I now have a mess. I have redundant FM folders within other FM folders (see attached),

Plus, inside virtually EVERY folder, including the top-level folder, there are files representing specific individual purchases or sales of specific stocks or funds.

Plus, over the years I have made repeat purchase of the same funds. So I could have purchased a specific fund 5 years ago, sold it 3 years ago, then bought it again last month. Lots of entries.

So now FM is getting funky. It doesn't know I sold something or bought something, and when I reconcile, it doesn't notice that there is a disagreement with the broker's records.

I'd like to clean this all up but am not sure how to do it. Can I move all of these transactions into a single folder? If so, which one is the INTENDED place to store discrete events?

PS, as a side frustration, I also can't alphabetize holdings when I create a report, so that it is very hard to reconcile with the broker's records, and I can't figure out how to fix that either.

[Mark]

Hi Mary Kennedy,

The default location for your data files (not the program itself) is "My Documents \ Fund Manager". You can have Fund Manager help you by doing a "File / File Operations / Set Data Location..." and choosing this folder. Any currently open data files not located here will be copied to this folder. You would need to repeat this for each *.mm4 file you are using. Usually you only have one *.mm4 portfolio file, so you would only need to do this once to get all your data files into a single folder. After this, you could delete all your other data folders. I'd suggest maybe moving them somewhere different for a while first, just to make sure you don't need them. After using FM for a while without issue, you can then safely delete them. If you already have a bunch of unused data files in your "My Documents \ Fund Manager" folder, you could create a new/empty folder and have FM copy all your data files into this folder instead. For example "My Documents \ Fund Manager New".

You would want to keep your one autoback folder, directly beneath "My Documents \ Fund Manager", as that is the default location for your automatic backups. Verify this under "Options / General Preferences... / Data".

The above will get all your *.dat files into a single folder. However, if you've created multiple *.dat files for the same security, and have transactions spread among multiple investments that should have been in a single investment file, this will not fix that. You can merge multiple investment files that belong together into a single investment file by following this tutorial on merging investments.

When you create a report that lists by investment, the default sort order is "Investment Stack". You can sort the investment stack by name, by using "Investments / Sort By / Name". This is probably better, but you could also just force the report to sort by name using "Sort / Investment". Sorting the stack though will have the benefit that future reports will automatically be sorted by name. Save your portfolio after sorting the stack by using "File / Save Portfolio".

[Mary Kennedy]

OK, small detail I forgot to mention. I am trying to run this on a cloud drive so I can access it from multiple devices. There is a "documents" folder up there but FM is not under that right now. Would that be my first step, then, to move my FM files into the cloud-based "My Documents" folder, then follow the rest of your ideas?

[Mark]

You can use the Set Data Location... command to move them anywhere you want, local/cloud/etc it doesn't matter, as long as you have write permission to the location.