Long term backups and Passport (Windows Live ID)

When saving Microsoft Money backup files which have Microsoft Passport enabled, one must be careful about the long term accessibility of the backup file.

The backup file may contain passport (Windows Live ID) protection, which may be useful for the live copy of the file (especially if downloading automatically from financial institutions). However, this could be a problem if you later want to use that file online and the passport is forgotten (and possibly the associated email address no longer in use). There also can be issues if the passport functionality changes in future - there is no guarantee that you will be able to open really old backups.

Although you may be able to use a passport protected file 'offline', you can't remove the passport whilst in this state. So, a recommendation would be to therefore occasionally remove the Passport (Windows Live ID) password protection, and make a backup copy without it.

Removing the passport can be done on a file (Article 55), but you may also need to turn off synchronization with the MSN Money servers.

Note that older file backups which use Passport are more and more likely to be inoperable with newer versions of Microsoft Money as time goes on. Therefore it is useful to remember to keep the installation media for all versions of Money that you have backup files for, so the files can be opened in future if required.