Changing an investment from one type to another

When you set up an investment, you specify the type of investment that it is, such as mutual fund, stock etc.

If you subsequently need to change this type, then it is not simple to do in Microsoft Money prior to Money 2007, as the program doesn't have a simple option to change a security type.

The easiest way to change the type, especially if there are very few transactions, would be to take a record of those transactions, delete the existing investment and recreate it with the correct type.

If this is not possible, then you should perform the following steps, after taking a safe backup of your file.

1. Create a new investment - this should use the correct type. You may need to give it a temporary name and not use a symbol at this stage
2. In the old investment, add a large (temporary) purchase transaction - this should be dated before the date of the first investment transaction. The amount should be larger that all of the investment transactions you have (the idea is that in the step below, you don't ever end up with a negative number of shares/units).
3. Go through each of transactions (except the temporary one), changing the investment name from the old name to the new name
4. When you've done this to all transactions, delete the temporary transaction and the old investment

If you wish to rename the new investment name, I would recommend doing that after a restart of Microsoft Money. Additionally, if you need to assign a symbol, then this should be done after deleting the old investment (see Article 44).