Is Microsoft Money Still Available? MNY Files in 2026

Microsoft Money is discontinued, but it is still available: Microsoft released Money Plus Sunset Deluxe as a free download that opens .mny files and runs with no connection to Microsoft's servers. In July 2026 it still installs and still opens files on current Windows. What it cannot do is download transactions from a bank, sync, or receive updates, so it works as a reader and an exporter rather than as software to keep running your finances on.

Microsoft stopped selling Money in 2009 and ended online services for it in 2011. The Sunset editions were the parting gift: a fully unlocked version so nobody's data was held hostage. Seventeen years later, people are still opening those files, usually because someone needs history that only exists inside an .mny.

Can I still use Microsoft Money in 2026?

You can open and edit your file, enter transactions manually, and run reports. You cannot download from a bank, use bill pay, get quotes, or receive any update including security fixes. Practically, that makes Sunset Deluxe a good archive reader and a bad daily driver, especially on a machine that touches the internet.

The install itself is straightforward on Windows 10 and 11, occasionally needing compatibility mode for the installer. It does not require a Microsoft account or a product key, because the Sunset build was released with activation removed. If someone is charging you for it, walk away.

How do I open an MNY file without Microsoft Money?

You cannot. An .mny is Microsoft Money's own database format, and only Money reads it. No spreadsheet, no accounting package, and no converter opens one directly. The only route is installing Money Plus Sunset Deluxe on a Windows machine, opening the file there, and exporting the data to a format other software understands.

Every tool that claims to convert .mny directly is either wrapping the same Sunset export or overselling itself. Treat the claim as a warning sign. The genuine two step process (open in Sunset, export QIF, convert the QIF) is not hard, and it is the only one that produces trustworthy numbers.

What if the Money file has a password I do not remember?

Then the file is effectively gone. Money encrypts password protected files, and without the password neither Sunset nor any third party can open it. This is a real dead end rather than a puzzle with a clever answer, and the practical route is rebuilding the register from bank statements for whatever period you actually need.

This comes up most in estate work, when a family finds a laptop with a decade of records and no password. Banks will produce historical statements for closed accounts, usually going back seven years, and a preparer can work from those. It is slower than an export, but it produces defensible numbers.

How do I export my data out of Microsoft Money?

Open the file in Money, choose File, then Export, then Loose QIF, and click OK. Money asks for a file name and whether the account is a regular or an investment account. You export one account at a time, so list your accounts first and work through them. Strict QIF is the alternative if a destination program rejects the loose format.

1. Write down every account before you start. Money gives you no progress indicator, and skipping an account is the mistake almost everyone makes.
2. Choose Loose QIF by default. It preserves more field detail. Fall back to Strict only if an importer refuses the file.
3. Name files after the accounts. Six files called export.qif help nobody.
4. Answer the account type prompt correctly. Investment registers use different QIF tags than banking registers.
5. Confirm each file is not zero bytes. That is the tell for a silently failed export on a damaged Money file.

What can I do with the QIF file once I have it?

QIF is plain text and widely readable, but not by the software most people are moving to. Quicken for Windows, Moneydance and Banktivity import QIF directly. QuickBooks does not read QIF in any version, so it needs converting to a QBO Web Connect file. Excel does not read QIF as a table, so it needs converting to XLSX.

If QuickBooks is the destination, the Microsoft Money to QuickBooks page walks the whole path, and the QIF to QBO converter does the format step. If you just want to read the history, the QIF to Excel converter turns it into a sortable sheet in one pass.

What is actually inside a QIF export?

Plain text, one tagged line per field: D for date, T for amount, P for payee, M for memo, L for category, N for check number, and a caret on its own line closing each transaction. It contains your transaction history and nothing sensitive: no passwords, no full account numbers, no bank credentials.

Two quirks cause most conversion trouble. Old exports wrote two digit years with a leading apostrophe, so 2003 appears as '03, which naive importers turn into 2103 or drop entirely. And QIF has no field identifying which account a block of transactions belongs to unless the account list was exported alongside it, which is exactly why one file per account is the safer habit. Our QIF file reference covers the tag set in detail.

Should I migrate, or just archive?

Archive if the data is personal history you might want to look at. Migrate if something current depends on it: an open audit, unfiled returns, a business that is still trading, or an accountant who needs the books. Archiving costs one afternoon of exports and a folder of files. Migrating costs the same exports plus a real decision about which periods belong in the new system.

The middle path is what most people end up doing, and it is the right one. Convert the current and prior tax year into your new accounting system as live transactions, and convert everything older to Excel as an archive. You keep the history queryable without dragging fifteen years of grocery transactions into a business ledger.

What replaced Microsoft Money?

There was never an official successor. Microsoft pointed users at Quicken at the time, and the field since has split between subscription personal finance apps, Quicken Classic and Simplifi, Moneydance, Banktivity, Monarch, YNAB and Empower, and business accounting like QuickBooks and Xero for anyone with a company behind them.

Which side of that split you belong on is the real question, and it usually comes down to whether money moves through a business. A lot of long time Money users were quietly running one: an eBay operation, a rental, a bit of consulting. If the income now arrives from several platforms at once, a dedicated income tracker that pulls every payout into one place handles that better than a general ledger app, and the accounting system handles what happens after. Our Quicken alternatives comparison covers the personal finance side, including which options can import your data at all.

The one thing worth doing today

Export the file, even if you have not decided where the data is going. Money Plus Sunset Deluxe still runs today, and there is no reason to assume that stays true on whatever Windows release ships next. QIF files are small, plain text, and readable by everything, which is more than can be said for the .mny sitting next to them.

Next steps: move Microsoft Money into QuickBooks, read the guide to opening a QIF file, or check whether QuickBooks can import a QIF for the short answer on that question.