New HYPTUSS versions 11.30 and b-d

[kiloran]

4. All charts gives me a run time error 76. Excel 2007, Windows VISTA (I know it is very old and keep meaning to go and buy something new), not a problem for me as never use this feature, worked on older versions.
A long shot..... this might be due to path lengths. All Charts creates a file HYP_Charts.html in the same folder as the HYPTUSS,
then tries to open that file using the default browser. I think Windows (32-bit) is limited to path lengths of 255 characters. Might be wrong. Do you have your HYPTUSS in a folder many layers deep, like C:/aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/eee/fff/ggg/hhh/iii/jjj/kkk/lll/ettcetcetc/HYPTUSS.XLS


Raptor.

--kiloran

Raptor...
I fired up an old laptop this morning and booted into Vista for the first time in a year or so. Oh dear, what a painful experience! Click, wait 10 minutes. Click again, wait 10 minutes. The same laptop running Linux Mint is astonishingly quicker.
Anyway, I loaded 10 shares into HYPTUSS 11.30. The Sector Weighting chart looked fine, but the All Charts function failed. I didn't get an error message, and it created the file HYP_Charts.html, which then opened in the default browser Firefox.
When I opened the file in Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox, it displayed the control buttons along the top, but would not display any charts. I sent the file to my Windows 7 laptop and it worked fine, so clearly the structure of the html file is OK and the problem is related to Vista. I've no idea what the problem might be as yet, but I'll have a look at it when I have a year to spare

--kiloran

[kiloran]

Kiloran, is this alteration something we can get into the next release, as there does seem to be a little bit of wasted space at the top of the Excel sector-bar-chart that we can use to help give more scope for anyone with larger portfolios in terms of numbers-of-sectors?

That testing-team eh, I'll be having a word with them as soon as I, erm, see him....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Yes, we can certainly look at this. I'm a little wary of leaving too little space due to the large number of combinations of Windows Vista/7/8/10 and Excel 2000/2002/2007/2010/1016 etc, so by fixing it for one combination we might screw up another. We'll see.

If I was smarter, I might be able to find a way to dynamically size the image depending on the size of the user's screen. Of course, that would require a smarter testing team

--kiloran

[Raptor]

4. All charts gives me a run time error 76. Excel 2007, Windows VISTA (I know it is very old and keep meaning to go and buy something new), not a problem for me as never use this feature, worked on older versions.
A long shot..... this might be due to path lengths. All Charts creates a file HYP_Charts.html in the same folder as the HYPTUSS,
then tries to open that file using the default browser. I think Windows (32-bit) is limited to path lengths of 255 characters. Might be wrong. Do you have your HYPTUSS in a folder many layers deep, like C:/aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/eee/fff/ggg/hhh/iii/jjj/kkk/lll/ettcetcetc/HYPTUSS.XLS


Raptor.

--kiloran

Raptor...
I fired up an old laptop this morning and booted into Vista for the first time in a year or so. Oh dear, what a painful experience! Click, wait 10 minutes. Click again, wait 10 minutes. The same laptop running Linux Mint is astonishingly quicker.
Anyway, I loaded 10 shares into HYPTUSS 11.30. The Sector Weighting chart looked fine, but the All Charts function failed. I didn't get an error message, and it created the file HYP_Charts.html, which then opened in the default browser Firefox.
When I opened the file in Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox, it displayed the control buttons along the top, but would not display any charts. I sent the file to my Windows 7 laptop and it worked fine, so clearly the structure of the html file is OK and the problem is related to Vista. I've no idea what the problem might be as yet, but I'll have a look at it when I have a year to spare

--kiloran

Have done nothing with the spreadsheet but today the livecharts work correctly? Firefox is my browser of choice as well.

Have played with the sector graph and it worked fine with resizing, took a few attempts but worked for 20 separate sectors displayed. Thanks for the pointers.

Strange you mention the path lengths limits. Last week one of the database guru's at a major "supermarket" produced a spreadsheet for all the country, but did not test that it worked where he "stored" the queries. Got a weird message on trying to open it and e-mailed him suggesting it might be a length problem when I saw where he had put the file and the name he gave it (some people are strange with naming conventions). No reply but an hour later it had been moved and file name changed and it worked. He never replied but have come to expect that as they assume us poor clerks know nothing. Unfortunately for them I had 30 years in IT and was at one point a recognised database guru around Europe....(among many other hats I have worn).

Thanks to you both for the time and effort you put into this.

Raptor.

[kiloran]

Have done nothing with the spreadsheet but today the livecharts work correctly? Firefox is my browser of choice as well.
Weird!

Have played with the sector graph and it worked fine with resizing, took a few attempts but worked for 20 separate sectors displayed. Thanks for the pointers.

Raptor.

Raptor, any chance you could upload before and after screenshots of the Sector Weighting chart (using http://imgur.com/ for example) so that we can see the problem?

--kiloran

[spiderbill]

Installed the new version properly last night (Win 10, Libre Office) and it's working perfectly.

The new manual update feature on the portfolio history finally makes that useful for me (previously it gave me false figures as I have to put in the price of a US share manually) so thanks for that and the running yield record.

Great to have the graphs back, and thanks for adding the single graph to the Watchlist, which makes it much more usable for me.

Will be interesting to compare the dividends data sources over the next few weeks - wil report back on their relative accuracy.

All in all a great new version - thanks again guys.

[Itsallaguess]

If I was smarter, I might be able to find a way to dynamically size the image depending on the size of the user's screen. Of course, that would require a smarter testing team

LOL!

OUR testing team have sent you an email with an attachment on!!



Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[UncleEbenezer]

Just been test-driving this for the first time (something I've long intended). Motivated by the fact that Yahoo changes broke the quotes on my old spreadsheet! I think I'm going to try & merge it into my existing stuff. Or vice versa.

I like principle of the data sheet pre-populated with lots of companies. That might be worth opening to direct contributions from the public (or at least Fooldom) so we can contribute updates directly. I found myself making several additions locally, and I noticed a bunch of entries that are no longer valid - e.g. companies that have been taken over.

A few observations arising from problems I encountered. I haven't thought these through to whether I can fix them, so just dumping here:

- Currency issues. I entered PEY (Princess Private Equity). It's quoted in Euros (€10.05), but HYPTUS thinks they're pence and values my shares at 10.05p!
- Verizon (VZ) - a foreign HYP holding. The sheet has VZC, which is dead. Needs tweaking to work with a NYSE code.
- TRIG (Renewables Infrastructure Group) has no digitallook entry. How to deal with?
- RSAB (RSA Prefs). Since they're fixed income, they'd work nicely with a manual facility to fix income without trying to look up yield.

Now, as soon as I have any ?????? entries from the above, the weighting and the Top-Up order column die. Not a problem for me, but it's untidy Maybe the top-up order might be tweaked to exclude any bad weightings?

One more thought: maybe calling Equity Investment Instruments a sector isn't really helpful?

p.s. Any thoughts on supporting OEICs and/or Trackers?

[kiloran]

Just been test-driving this for the first time (something I've long intended). Motivated by the fact that Yahoo changes broke the quotes on my old spreadsheet! I think I'm going to try & merge it into my existing stuff. Or vice versa.

I like principle of the data sheet pre-populated with lots of companies. That might be worth opening to direct contributions from the public (or at least Fooldom) so we can contribute updates directly. I found myself making several additions locally, and I noticed a bunch of entries that are no longer valid - e.g. companies that have been taken over.

We do clean up the companies from time to time, though it's not a big deal if there are a few ex-companies in there. If you have suggestions for companies to add, let us know and I can add them in.

Currency issues. I entered PEY (Princess Private Equity). It's quoted in Euros (€10.05), but HYPTUS thinks they're pence and values my shares at 10.05p!

Unfortunately the Yahoo feed does not specify currency. This isn't a problem with the vast majority of shares since Yahoo generally quotes in pence, but we have seen ETFs quoted in pounds and does cause some issues. We are reviewing Google as an alternative source of data since it does specify currency in the data feed. Having non-sterling shares also presents the problem of currency exchange rates.

Verizon (VZ) - a foreign HYP holding. The sheet has VZC, which is dead. Needs tweaking to work with a NYSE code.

The tool is fixed to London-quoted companies. The tool was originally conceived as a simple spreadsheet to support the HYP methodology, which is very much biased towards income-paying UK companies. It's not intended as an all-singing, all-dancing tool.

TRIG (Renewables Infrastructure Group) has no digitallook entry. How to deal with?

This?: http://www.digitallook.com/equity/Renew ... oup_LtdThe

RSAB (RSA Prefs). Since they're fixed income, they'd work nicely with a manual facility to fix income without trying to look up yield.

Sounds like it could be a significant change to handle such an exception. It's always a difficult compromise between having a tool which can handle any eventuality, with the implicit complication, and having a simple but useful tool for the majority of users. I've added this to my "things to think about" list.

Now, as soon as I have any ?????? entries from the above, the weighting and the Top-Up order column die. Not a problem for me, but it's untidy Maybe the top-up order might be tweaked to exclude any bad weightings?

Having the weighting and top-up order data die is a way of forcing the user to correct the data, otherwise the data may be meaningless. It's only likely to be an issue for unusual shares. For the vast majority of UK high-cap companies (FTSE100 or FTSE350) for which HYP was conceived, it's not an issue.

One more thought: maybe calling Equity Investment Instruments a sector isn't really helpful?

The definition of sectors is a topic that crops up from time to time on the HYP Practical board. Equity Investment Instruments was used by Digital Look but I just looked and it seems that DL now calls the sector "Investment Firms", which I think is a very recent change. You can change the definition of sectors to your own preference (some HYPers already do this). If there is a great demand to change to "Investment Firms", it's no problem to change. Anyone else got any views on this?

p.s. Any thoughts on supporting OEICs and/or Trackers?

Not really. Partly because they don't really fit into the HYP methodology, and partly because we would have to find new sources of data (I don't think Digital Look provides yield information for OEICs or ETFs)

Sorry if this response sounds a bit unhelpful, Uncle Eb, we really do welcome feedback and suggestions, but as I mentioned the tool is really intended to support the classic HYP methodology rather than a mainstream portfolio tool.

--kiloran

[UncleEbenezer]

We do clean up the companies from time to time, though it's not a big deal if there are a few ex-companies in there. If you have suggestions for companies to add, let us know and I can add them in.

My real point was that the hurdle to contributing is lower if the document is under public version control. Or even a suitably-structured wiki. Maybe also the whole tool, though I'd be less likely to contribute anything useful there.

I've been experimenting with it: tried adding as many assets as I could from the SIPP and ISA, though only a minority of them are good HYP shares.
- ARL (Atlantis resources). Not at all a HYP share, but then neither are some existing entries! It was while entering ARL that I noticed my former biggest (and certainly most profitable) holding ARM.
- JLEN - John Laing Environmental Infrastructure.
- PCA - Palace Capital

I think there were others, but I'm posting from the wrong place to check.

RSAB (RSA Prefs). Since they're fixed income, they'd work nicely with a manual facility to fix income without trying to look up yield.

I've added this to my "things to think about" list.

Great. That justifies my posting. Couldn't ask for more.

One more thought: maybe calling Equity Investment Instruments a sector isn't really helpful?

The definition of sectors is a topic that crops up from time to time on the HYP Practical board.

My main point was that ITs themselves focus on a wide variety of sectors. I have quite a few ITs that specialise in particular areas. If I enter direct shares and ITs in the same sheet (I don't plan to, but I did while test-driving), I get a sector breakdown of nearly 70% Equity Investment Instruments.

Sorry if this response sounds a bit unhelpful, Uncle Eb, we really do welcome feedback and suggestions, but as I mentioned the tool is really intended to support the classic HYP methodology rather than a mainstream portfolio tool.

Not in the least unhelpful! I spend a lot of my life hacking open source, and I know the principles very well. If I want something badly enough I hack it myself; else I just take what you've done and perhaps throw my thoughts into the ring!

BTW, HYPTUSS is clear: I should top up Stagecoach. Maybe I will.

[kiloran]

We do clean up the companies from time to time, though it's not a big deal if there are a few ex-companies in there. If you have suggestions for companies to add, let us know and I can add them in.

My real point was that the hurdle to contributing is lower if the document is under public version control. Or even a suitably-structured wiki. Maybe also the whole tool, though I'd be less likely to contribute anything useful there.

I think you are suggesting that the document should be on a public site for anyone to edit. I'm not sure that the effort to implement that would be justified by the overall benefit. And the risks would worry me, it would be easy for someone to corrupt the data.
Thought.... maybe you just mean a public site where people could suggest changes, which would then be implemented by Itsallaguess and me.

--kiloran

[UncleEbenezer]

We do clean up the companies from time to time, though it's not a big deal if there are a few ex-companies in there. If you have suggestions for companies to add, let us know and I can add them in.

My real point was that the hurdle to contributing is lower if the document is under public version control. Or even a suitably-structured wiki. Maybe also the whole tool, though I'd be less likely to contribute anything useful there.

I think you are suggesting that the document should be on a public site for anyone to edit. I'm not sure that the effort to implement that would be justified by the overall benefit. And the risks would worry me, it would be easy for someone to corrupt the data.
--kiloran

That would be the ultimate. And the risk is limited by the version control system, which logs and optionally notifies all changes, and makes it very easy to revert any change.

But in practice, using an access control list is likely to be more practical. Then people request write access, which can be granted but can also be taken away. The hurdle of having to ask generally keeps destructive influences away.

There's a lot of infrastructure for collaboration out there. All those open-source projects work on it. Like, for example, the many software products that drive the LemonFool website (two of which I work on).

[TheGaz]

I'm new to this forum but I thought I'd give HYPTUSS a go. I downloaded the latest version to my Mac (running 10.12 Sierra) and tried to open the sheet with Excel 15.31 (the version that is current with Office 365). No joy.
Got an error: "This workbook contains content that is not supported by this version of Excel" and offered me the choice of cancel or read-only. I opted for the latter but got another error "Microsoft Forms: Could not load an objects because they are not available on this machine."

[kiloran]

I'm new to this forum but I thought I'd give HYPTUSS a go. I downloaded the latest version to my Mac (running 10.12 Sierra) and tried to open the sheet with Excel 15.31 (the version that is current with Office 365). No joy.
Got an error: "This workbook contains content that is not supported by this version of Excel" and offered me the choice of cancel or read-only. I opted for the latter but got another error "Microsoft Forms: Could not load an objects because they are not available on this machine."

Yes, Excel on the Mac is a problem, which I believe is due to the lack of support for ActiveX controls.

Try the LibreOffice/OpenOffice version. There have been some minor issues noted in the past, but it does work.

--kiloran

[TheGaz]

Yes, Excel on the Mac is a problem, which I believe is due to the lack of support for ActiveX controls.

Try the LibreOffice/OpenOffice version. There have been some minor issues noted in the past, but it does work.

--kiloran

Correct, no ActiveX on a Mac. I''ve got a Win 10 virtual machine I can try.

Thanks.

[sanityclaws]

If it's any help to TheGaz I can confirm that the LibreOffice version of HYPTUSS works brilliantly on Macs.

While I am here I would like to proffer my thanks & appreciation to Kiloran, Itsallaguess & all the others who assist with snagging & testing the HYPTUSS. I find it to be an invaluable tool & use it to record multiple portfolios as well as for the purpose for which it was originally designed

[TheGaz]

If it's any help to TheGaz I can confirm that the LibreOffice version of HYPTUSS works brilliantly on Macs.

Thanks, but I've got enough s/w installed on my Mac as it is

Running the Excel version in a VM works fine.

[UncleEbenezer]

Are the Python macros public? I'd like to be able to use them in my own spreadsheet, alongside my existing info (prices paid, VCT tax rebates, dividend histories).

I've been trying to view them within Libreoffice, but I only get as far as HypTopUp and a list of macro names, with the libreoffice menu options create/edit/rename.delete all greyed out. As far as I can see, they exist only as binary in the download.

[kiloran]

Are the Python macros public? I'd like to be able to use them in my own spreadsheet, alongside my existing info (prices paid, VCT tax rebates, dividend histories).

I've been trying to view them within Libreoffice, but I only get as far as HypTopUp and a list of macro names, with the libreoffice menu options create/edit/rename.delete all greyed out. As far as I can see, they exist only as binary in the download.

Yes, they are totally public, but LibreOffice doesn't make it obvious.

Open the HYPTUSS using an archive manager such as 7-Zip, then navigate to Scripts/python, and you will see the file HypTopUp.py

I'll add this info to the User Guide

--kiloran

[UncleEbenezer]

Open the HYPTUSS using an archive manager such as 7-Zip,

Good grief! The idea that it's a zip archive hadn't even crossed my mind.

Why can I only give one thumb up?