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Porfolio for Epoc | |
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Can I change the user's base currency, defined at the first run of Porfolio?
While the base currency of each account, and the currency of quotation of each share can be changed from within the application, it is not possible to change the "user's base currency", defined at the first run, and which is used for "all accounts" data. The change can be done from outside with a utility called porfocurr.opo, which can be downloaded here: download and follow the instructions in the readme file. |
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During an internet import, the application crashes with an error message "User" and error code 20...
The crash happens with versions 5.13p and earlier. It is is due to a change in the format of the answers sent by the server of Yahoo Finance server. The bug was fixed in version 5.13x. |
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Is there no version of Porfolio for the Nokia Communicator 9210?
Porfolio for 9210 is Pocket Folio... |
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Can I import the day to day value of indices (like XETRA DAX, NASDAQ,...) from Internet?
Yes. Many indices have a symbol starting with a "^" character (^GDAXI for Xetra Dax, ^NDX for Nasdaq 100,...). This character is NOT the one available in the Special Characters table of the Psion (which one accesses with the command Shift+Ctrl+C). To enter it you need to press Ctrl+094 instead (keep the Ctrl key depressed, while you press 0, 9 and 4). |
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Is there a "What if" command?
There is no "what if" command as such but... the most common case of "what if" is "what would be my capital gain if I sold this share at such price?". To answer that question one can do as follows:
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When I try to install the application on my Series 7 from my PC, the PC installer starts "checking dependencies", then hangs, or crashes...
This incident is not uncommon on the Series 7, and not specific to Porfolio. The usual cure is to transfer the installation file Porfolio.sis to the Series 7, and install from there, instead of installing through the PC: copy Porfolio.sis anywhere on your Series 7 and tap it with the pointer... |
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How can I transfer Porfolio from my old Series 5 to my new 5mx, revo or Series 7,...?
The first thing to do will be to ask for a registration code under your name for the new machine. To generate this code, your new machine's Unique Id number is required. Click here if you do not know how to find it. All Porfolio data are stored in a folder called \System\Apps\Porfolio\Data\, either on the disk c: (recommended), or on the disk d: (slower option). The recommended procedure for the transfer is as follows:
If you have already installed Porfolio on your new machine, and want then to transfer your Porfolio data from the old machine, you can still do it: copy all the files from the folder \System\Apps\Porfolio\Data\ on the old machine to the same folder on the new machine. Note that all data entered on the new machine before the transfer will be erased. Another important reason to prefer the first method is that, whenever you install a new version of Porfolio, at its first run it checks the format of the database, and modifies it if needed. This check is not performed if you transfer data after having installed and run the new version already once... If things go wrong, it is suggested that you re-install Porfolio once again, without deleting any file. |
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Porfolio startup aborts on the message "Wrong version of Sysram1.OPX".
OPXs are particular pieces of programme, which can be used by several applications on your machine. Porfolio.SIS installs three such programmes: GPrinter.OPX, Kylom.OPX and Sysram1.OPX. The versions are recent enough for the corresponding version of Porfolio. Note that:
Some cases have been reported, where the old OPX was still hanging there, and the "wrong version" message issued, even after all applications were closed. Then a soft reset of the machine solved the problem. |
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Some of my shares have a little dot after their name in the Account screen or in the Transactions screen. What does this dot mean?
These dots mean that you have recorded a "short memo" concerning each of these shares or transactions. To see the memo, modify it, or delete it, you can either tap the dot with the pointer, or press (Shift+Tab)... |
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How can I import quotes from the Internet into Porfolio, directly on my Epoc machine or through my PC?
From version 5.13i "Internet", the easiest situation is when you have a web connexion on your Epoc machine (like a Travel modem, or a handphone with integrated modem and IR connexion to your machine). In this case the command "Import quotes from Internet" will automatically retrieve the latest quotes from Yahoo Finance!, provided the tickers (or Kenn-Nr) of the different shares and indices are identical to the "symbols" of these shares and indices in Yahoo Finance!. The rest of the discussion addresses the case where you do not have a connected machine, or you need to import quotes from a source different from Yahoo Finance!. There are many sources for download of share quotes from the internet. Most users have found Yahoo Finance very convenient, and this example will use it. Other users import quotes from other sources, like www.digital-investor.de or www.stockquote.de. Here is an example of how to import quotes from Yahoo Finance. The different steps described hereunder are:
Access Yahoo Finance: start the Web application on your Psion and type www.yahoo.com to access the Yahoo main gate. From there follow the "Stock quotes" link, and select Yahoo UK & Ireland. The direct URL of this page is http://uk.finance.yahoo.com. The first thing to do is to establish the list of tickers (or "Symbols") corresponding to the shares you are interested in. The "Symbol Lookup" function of Yahoo can be used for that purpose. Enter the Tickers ("Symbols") for the requested quotes: we have selected 3 shares for this example, namely Psion Plc in London, with ticker pon.l, Alcatel in Paris, with ticker 13000.pa, and DaimlerChrysler in Frankfurt, with ticker 710000.f. Enter the 3 tickers in the input window at the left of the "Get Quotes" button. The tickers are sepatated by spaces: 
Tap the "Get Quotes" button. After a few seconds Yahoo returns a table with the requested last quotes displayed: 
Get to the bottom of the table and tap the "Download Spreadsheet Format" link. Here is the result: 
Note that this is what is displayed on the Psion 5mx, the Revo and other Epoc ER5 machines. We will see later that the result is different on the Psion Series 5 "Classic", and there is a slightly different import procedure for that machine. We can now bookmark the link so that we can access the same quotes again later without the need to re-type the tickers. The command is Menu | Edit | Add bookmark | To current page: 
You can check the new bookmark by opening the "Bookmark manager" of Web, with the command Menu | Go to | Bookmark manager: 
The new bookmark, which we have just created, is the one in the first line (see the string pon.l+13000.pa+710000.f on the right side). Next time you want to download the 3 quotes, you will go back to the Bookmark manager, select this bookmark and press Enter. The main advantage of this method is speed: by using the bookmark, you do not need (1) to re-type a lot of tickers and (2) to download any image, and, as we will see later, you download information which is directly useable by Porfolio. The bookmarks can be edited, with the command Menu | Edit | Edit bookmark. The following screen shows how I have added the ticker for Club Med (12156.pa) to the existing, between 13000.pa and 710000.F. The tickers in these bookmarks are separated by a "+" sign: 
The line which is modified is the second line, "Location". The first line ("Name") is only a label. Any change on it will be shown in the Bookmark manager screen, but will have no effect on the internet call itself. You can add more tickers, up to a limit of 255 characters in the "Location" line. If you need to download more quotes, you can create more bookmarks, along the same model as this one… We will now copy the information from Web to Porfolio: the process is similar to the traditional Copy/Paste process used in many Windows or Epoc applications. Let us first copy the information from the Web screen to the Epoc clipboard: in Web set the focus on the (upper) display window (you can tap the screen with the pointer, or press Fn+Arrow Up), then use the commands Menu | Edit | Select all and Menu | Edit | Copy: 
Now jump to Porfolio and store the clipboard (this is the "Paste" part of the story) with the command Menu | Shares | Import quotes | Save clipboard. Note that the commands Menu | Shares | Import quotes |… can be invoked either from an Account screen or from the Update all shares screen. In both cases all quotes found in the import file will be processed, not just the quotes in the account presently displayed. 
The clipboard is saved under a name like Clpboard.bkpx. If a Clpboard.bkp0 already exists, you can decide to overwrite it or to save to a different name. In this later case Porfolio will propose the name Clpboard.bkp1, etc… When you have saved the clipboard, you can jump back to Web, call another bookmark, Select all and Copy to the clipboard, jump to Porfolio, etc… and store as many Clpboard.bkpxx in Porfolio as you had bookmarks in Web. It may be useful to know that all the copying can be done offline in order to limit the time of connexion, specially if you connect with a mobile phone. If you have 5 bookmarks, you can call all of them in a row, without leaving Web:
Before starting the import itself in Porfolio, you must check that the Tickers in the database match exactly the ones in the download file. The command to display and update tickers is Ctrl+T, either from an Account screen or from the Update all shares screen. The 3 Tickers to check are PON.L, 13000.PA and 710000.F. Note that all letters are in upper case. The double quotes are filtered out by Porfolio, when it reads the information. They must NOT be part of the Tickers. Now the import is done in Porfolio with the command Menu | Shares | Import quotes | from 'clipboard' file, which opens the clipboard selector: 
The content of the selected clipboard is displayed in a window. You can see the same lines as were displayed in the Web screen: 
You can move around this screen with the arrows, and then press Enter. The format of this file is CSV (field separator is comma, like between the ticker "PON.L" and the quote 421, and the decimal separator is dot, like in 70.50). 
The field number for Tickers ("PON.L" or "13000.PA") is 1 and the field number for quotes (421 or 70.50) is 2: 
Now press Enter and the import will proceed, until a short report is displayed, saying that 3 quotes have been updated. All Epoc systems are not identical. On the Series 5 "classic" (ER3), the Web application does not accept incoming files in the same way as on the Series 5mx and other ER5 machines. When you call the bookmarks mentionned above, the file received is not displayed on the screen, but the following message is displayed instead: 
You must answer Yes, and save to a file: 
Here, there is no copying of clipboard. The incoming data are stored in a file, which you will call e.g. "quotes.csv". Here again you can create as many "quotes.csv" files as you have bookmarks in Web. Make sure that you give them different names : quotes.csv, quotes1.csv, quotes2.csv, etc… The command to import into Porfolio is Menu | Shares | Import quotes | from standard text file. From there the process is exactly the same as described above for the import from a clipboard file: selection of the file, line by line display, and import parameters (type of file, date, position of the fields for tickers and quotes). Another case of using the command Import quotes > from standard text file is when you download the quotes on your PC, and then transfer to the Epoc machine for import into Porfolio. If you access Yahoo Finance from your PC, you can enter an "unlimited" number of tickers in the input window at once. The trick then is to store all these tickers, separated by spaces, into a permanent text file and each time you want to download the quotes:
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Yahoo gives me quotes of my UK shares in Pence, while I manage my account in Pounds...
You can create a new currency called GBX for the Pence, with exchange rate 0.01 to the GBP (hopefully you will not have to update this exchange rate too often :-)), and use the GBX as currency of quotation of your shares. It is very easy to change the currency of quote of any share: from an Account screen, get to the Update all shares screen with the command Ctrl+Q, highlight the share in the list, and use command Menu | Shares | Currency. |
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The Import function for historical data in Chart does not work
The most frequent mistake is to enter dates with months written in 3 letters like in 3-Aug-1999 instead of 3-8-1999, or 3-08-1999, or 3-8-99... |
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Can I display quotes with 3 decimal positions instead of 2?
On popular demand this option has been added as a Preference item, from version 5.10. |
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Which files should I backup regularly?
All Porfolio data are stored in a folder called \System\Apps\Porfolio\Data\ (either on the disk c:, or on the disk d:). The file PorfoBase contains the names of accounts, currencies and shares, the details of all transactions, last quotes and balances on hand... The files called XHxx contain the Charts data (historical quotes), one file per share. If you monitor 100 shares, you will have 100 XHxx files, plus one per account... This makes the process of backing up a bit longish. I have tried to put all Chart data in one single file, but this resulted in an unacceptably slow operation of Porfolio :-( I have found that if the number of XHxx files is really big, it is faster to zip all the files into one single zip archive on your Epoc machine (with the excellent RMRZip), and then backup the zip archive, rather than backing up all the individual files. As explained in the Help, the Porfolio icons with account names, which Porfolio puts into the folder \Documents\Porfolio\, are not data files. They are merely "handles", which one can use to open Porfolio on the corresponding accounts. I have created them to give Porfolio a "feel" similar to other Epoc programmes. I personally manage a big number of accounts (for myself, my mother,...), but never use the icons: I always open Porfolio from the Extras bar (actually from Macro5), and then select the accounts from within the programme... You can move the Porfolio icons anywhere on your machine (and even lose them :-)). It will not prevent Porfolio from opening the corresponding accounts. |
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Can I change the names of accounts, shares or currencies,...?
Use the command Menu | Tools | Update | Names | .... Note that changing the name of an account in the system screen or deleting it has no effect. The Icons in the system screen are only "handles", which can be used to open Porfolio on the designated accounts. They contain no data. Also: the name of the account currently displayed cannot be changed. You must open another account first. |
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I have no more share "Big Brother" in any account, and I cannot delete it with the Housekeeping module. Why?
As explained in Help, a share cannot be deleted if there are still transactions recorded for it in one account. It is not enough to have sold the share. If you want to really get rid of it in the database, you must also delete all transactions on the share in all accounts: purchases, sales, dividends, etc... or delete the account itself. Rather than that drastic solution, you may prefer to declare the share "inactive". See the Porfolio online Help for that. |
