Best Way of making proper *.dat filenames?

[Juergen]

I am trying to convert from MSMoney to FM.
Mark suggested to use *.quif as the vehicle.
However, the MSMoney generated *.quif does not contain symbols, just the names of the investments.
Importing works great, except that the generated *.dat files have crazy names.
For instance, importing an ExxonMobil transaction makes a exxonmo.dat file, instead of a XOM.dat file.

To get around this dilemma, I have manually made a xom.dat file first, using New Investment with Price=1. Then used the quif import.

Is this the recommended way of going about this, or is there a better way?

I have been thinking of making a *.CSV file with the names and symbols and then importing it as a generic, followed by a *.quif import. In this case, I need
to enter a bogus number of shares in BNUM, so it imports.

From here, it looks like I may have to do a lot of typing. My wife has offered to help. We have a lot of symbols.....

Thanks.
Juergen

[Mark]

Hi Juergen,

The investment filenames are really irrelevant. I wouldn't worry about what they are named. I would do the the .QIF import, and then change the investment properties for each investment to have the correct symbol. From within the Portfolio Editor, right mouse click on an investment, and choose "Properties...", and change the symbol there.

When a .QIF file doesn't have symbols, the new investments will be created with the name in both the name and symbol fields. You'll just want to update the symbols after the import, so you can retrieve prices okay.

[Juergen]

Well, my wife and I sat down and created the *.dat templates from scratch, this morning. It wasn't actually as boring as I had feared.
The folder looks gorgeous with all these beautiful symb.dat files and none of the whacky truncated names as the file names.
You gotta have some pride in the way your folders look.

Juergen