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How to import historical investment transactions

What would be the most accurate yet easiest way to get historical investment data into Quicken 2006 Premier? I have recently started using quicken and was able to download only the past 18 months of my investment history from Vanguard but I would really like to go back farther, ideally back to 2000 which is when I started being a little more serious about investing.

Although I would really love to have this historial data I do not want sit down and manually enter all those transactions. I have been able to get history going back to 2001 from the vanguard web site into a spreadsheet but I do not know how to proceed from here.

Ultimately my goal would be to track my networth and I would really love to see how my investments have grown over time and be able to compare the rate of return from year to year and to see how much of my nest egg came from my contributions and how much from other contributions (dividends, stock splits etc...). I think to get this level of detail I am going to need every transaction entered.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks, Sam

Reply to
Sam
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"Sam" wrote

Backup your Vanguard data.

Backup your Quicken data.

Google for, download, and install, the free Excel macro, "xl2qif".

1.) Make sure your Vanguard data is formatted one row per transaction and no other rows are present for a transaction. 2.) Make sure each row contains the minimum fields necessary for a Quicken investment transaction. (Transaction Date, Action, Security, Number of Shares, Amount ... and possibly Price/Share). Other columns may be present, even if they do not pertain to Quicken. 3.) Make sure you use appropriate Quicken data in Quicken fields, not Vanguard data. For example, if the transaction is for a dividend. the Quicken "Action" value must be "Div", not "Distribution". 4.) Make sure your Excel security names are *exactly* the same as the ones you use in Quicken if the transaction is for an existing Quicken security. (Exactly means the same spelling, the same case, the same punctuation, the same number of spaces between words, etc.) 5.) Remove any heading rows and blank rows 5.) Select the Excel columns that contain the Quicken fields.

Use "xl2qif" to create a QIF file (Save to QIF) from your Vanguard Excel data (first telling xl2qif which column each Quicken field is in, by checking the Quicken field names in the order their Excel columns appear).

Read - and print, if needed - a post from the Intuit Quicken forums on importing QIF files into post-Q2004 versions of Quicken (found in the "Other Topics" forum). Modify your QIF file according to that post. Import.

Reply to
John Pollard

Something tells me you have done this before....

Thanks for the detailed response, I will try your suggestions very soon.

Sam

222 12663 body Something tells me you have done this before....

Thanks for the detailed response, I will try your suggestions very soon.

Sam

Reply to
Sam

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