Clean up files

[Ivan]

Hi Mark,

Over the years I have tracked some potential investments with FM which I have never purchased and then deleted them from FM. I would like to also delete the .dat files from my hard drive. My plan is to create a text file of the contents of the folder holding the .dat files and compare it with a custom report of filenames from FM. Two questions: First, is this the best way to do this? Second, if so, is there a way to export the custom report into a text file?

Thanks,
Ivan

[Mark]

Hi Ivan,

This is probably not the easiest way to do this. Here is one way you could do it more easily:

Open up your portfolio that has all your investments in it you want to keep. Use "Options / General Preferences... / Data" and turn on "Password Protect Data", and assign a password. (If you're already using this, change the password). Exit Fund Manager, and if prompted choose to save. This will cause all your data files to be re-written to disk. Now, you can sort all your data files in Windows Explorer by date, and any that weren't just modified aren't in your current portfolio. You could then delete them. I would suggest maybe temporarily moving them to a new folder first, just to make sure. If you can start FM with no issues, then you can safely delete them.

To answer you other question, yes you can export any report to a text file. From within the report, use "File / Export to CSV...". That will save it to a CSV file, which is a kind of text file. you could rename it to end in *.txt instead of *.csv if you wanted.