Closed investments

[rftanner]

Before one of the releases last year a closed investment was still in the .dat file and could be reopened along with its transaction history. Now, when I close an investment it is no longer in the .dat file. Is it somewhere else?

[Mark]

Hi rftanner,

Every investment is saved to its own *.dat investment file. When you close an investment in Fund Manager this does not delete the *.dat investment file from the disk. You can go back and use "File / Open Investment(s)..." to open any FM investment file. You can save your investments anywhere. The default location is "My Documents \ Fund Manager", but that doesn't prevent you from saving it anywhere else on your computer where you have write permission.

[rftanner]

Some I closed recently are in the *.dat file. However I looked for INTC which was closed 2-3 months ago and it is not there. In Portfolio Editor I highlighted the portfolio that held it and right clicked on Open Investments but it is not there. This is just one example.

[Mark]

Hi rftanner,

Some I closed recently are in the *.dat file.

Each investment is a .dat file. You don't have multiple investments in a single .dat file. It sounds like you are saying that you don't see your investment file(s) listed in the data folder you're looking in. If that is the case, I couldn't say where your investment file(s) are located. You could have saved them anywhere on your computer. They could be in another folder. You might search your computer for *.dat and see if you can find the files. If you make regular backups, you could also restore from any of the *.FMB backup files by using "File / Restore...".

[rftanner]

Apparently the INTC file and others did not covert when moving to a new version of FM. When I found an INTC file it asked if I wanted to convert all old files that did not convert properly. I said to only convert the INTC file. However it did not convert that to the *.dat files. This kind of makes sense since I had files going back years in the *.dat folder that suddenly disappeared - possibly in one of the FM version updates last year.

[Mark]

Hi rftanner,

did not convert that to the *.dat files

Do you mean that it didn't store it with your other *.dat files? There is only 1 investment per *.dat file. A file is not the same as a folder or directory, where multiple files can be located.

When FM opens an investment file from a prior version it asks for your permission before converting it to the current version's format. When you give it permission it converts it to the new format, but does not change the location of the investment file. it just re-saves it to the same file and folder where it was opened from.

It sounds like you may have your data files stored in multiple locations. You can use the new "File / File Operations / Set Data Location..." command to make sure all your investments are stored in the same folder. This only affects your open investments. It will not move investment files that are not open at the time you use this command.

[rftanner]

Mark,
I had to do what you suggest in order to move my files to my new computer late last month as they were stored in multiple locations somehow. I guess that the old files that may have been stored somewhere else on my old computer did not get moved over. I will check the old computer when I return to our home in March.
Bob Tanner