Help! Microsoft Money Wants IE 6

Sometimes  you’ll find out that the oddest things cause computer issues. Take Dave, for example. He writes:   “I installed Windows 10  and I can’t open Microsoft Money.  I get a message that says ‘Microsoft Money requires Internet Explorer 6 to function properly. Please reinstall IE 6 so these components can be added.’ When I tried it said IE is already installed (IE11) so it won’t install 6. Any ideas or is there a version of Money compatible with 10?”

Even if your version of Microsoft Money is from 2004, it should be compatible with Windows 10. But here’s the hitch – It needs Internet Explorer to function and it expects the version name for Internet Explorer to be less than 15 characters. IE 11 has a much longer version number. When it doesn’t find a version of Internet Explorer with the appropriate amount of characters, it defaults to asking for IE 6.  Microsoft Money hasn’t been supported since 2011, but there are alternative programs like Quicken and Mint.

But, there may be a way to fix it, if you want to get into tricky stuff like editing the registry.

Open reg edit. You can find it by typing reg edit in your search box.

Right-click on the search result and choose run as administrator.

Find the registry key for IE:

64-bit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

32-bit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

Once you find it, look for the version number in the window on the right.  It will look something like this: 9.11.10240.1638.  Change value so it contains less than 15 characters. Example: 9.11.10240.16

Choose OK. There’s a chance this could take care of the problem.

~ Cynthia