Record spin-off and "This operation cannot be performed"

Hi Folks,

I've never had any problems with MS Money 2004 and file corruption.

But I own some Motorola stock, which recently had a spin-off of Freescale
Semiconductor. When I try to record this special activity "Record a
spin-off" and diligently enter all of the information, it always results in a
dialog box with "This operation cannot be performed". When I click the More
Info button, it takes me to a Web page with very general instructions like:

Product: Money
ID: 34
Source: mnyob99
Version: 12.0
Symbolic Name: errUnknown
Message: This operation cannot be performed.

and an explanation of "Usually caused by a corupt file" (MSFT typo, not
mine). Problem is, I've run the repair tool on this file and no issues were
found. I do not believe my file is corrupt in any way, I just believe Money
is choking on this particular transaction.

1) Has anyone else experienced this problem?
2) Is there any known workaround, other than manually figuring out these
individual transactions?

Note sure if it is relevant, my MOT stock is only in one account, but it has
been transferred across two different accounts within Money in the past.

Thank you in advance.

Joel

Garry
Sat Dec 11 09:18:33 CST 2004

there is very little benefit in recording transaction as a spinoff, so I
sugget you record some kind of "Add Shares" and move on :-)

johnbusc
Sat Dec 11 12:04:24 CST 2004

Joel,

Further to Garry's prior response:

The Money spinoff function is evidently just a "wizard" to record a
Return of Capital transaction followed by a Buy of the new shares and
cash-in-lieu of fractional share(s) if applicable.

As Garry may have been implying, there's no real benefit of actually
using the spinoff function over just manually entering the various
transactions especially since my experience is that Money doesn't do
too good a job of accurately adjusting the resulting basis regardless
of method.

To be sure, figure your new basis outside Money. Since there would be
current year tax implications if cash-in-lieu AND future year tax
implications for sales of MOT and Freescale, I wouldn't trust Money to
provide these bases.

Regards,
JB

via_newsgroup
Sat Dec 11 13:04:22 CST 2004

In microsoft.public.money, johnbusc@hotmail.com wrote:

>
>
>The Money spinoff function is evidently just a "wizard" to record a
>Return of Capital transaction followed by a Buy of the new shares and
>cash-in-lieu of fractional share(s) if applicable.

Not exactly. If you do the spinoff, the
InvestingTools->CapitalGainsEstimator and the schedule D information
should reflect the correct basis if you use the wizard.

This is not to say that you cannot achieve correct basis otherwise.
You would need to enter an appropriate price for that AddShares.

>
>As Garry may have been implying, there's no real benefit of actually
>using the spinoff function over just manually entering the various
>transactions especially since my experience is that Money doesn't do
>too good a job of accurately adjusting the resulting basis regardless
>of method.
>
>To be sure, figure your new basis outside Money. Since there would be
>current year tax implications if cash-in-lieu AND future year tax
>implications for sales of MOT and Freescale, I wouldn't trust Money to
>provide these bases.

That is what the spinoff action should automate if given the right
data at spinoff time. I would, in his case, seek to void the
original transfers and Buy, and enter a new adjusted Buy into the
current account with a note in the investment details as well as the
transaction memo.