Mac Quicken 2007 importing a qif file

I copied your qif data and pasted it into a notepad file, and saved the data as a file with a "qif" extension.

Opened Quicken (Q2008 Premier for Windows), created a cash account named "Cash Account", and successfully imported your qif data (answered "yes" when asked to allow Quicken to create new categories for those named in your data but not in my Quicken file). Three transactions were imported into "Cash Account".

So I don't see any problem with the data; must be something else, either relating to Quicken for the Mac, or your specific setup.

A couple of additional observations.

In Q for Windows, a QIF file export has CR/LF characters at the end of each line. If Q for the Mac uses different delimiters, you probably won't be able to import unless you use the same delimiters.

In that vein; what happens if you try to import transactions you have exported? Setup a test where the only difference between two import attempts is that one uses an exported qif file, and the other uses a qif file you "cooked up".

Also, I seem to recall that Q for the Mac expects different date formats in QIF files than Q for Windows. I think that explains why the 3 transactions I successfully imported into Q for Windows have dates in 1908, and not 2008. But you might double check that Q for the Mac is expecting dates formatted as you have in your test data.

This may be it. I'll try it out tonight when I have some time. I'm not actually sure how to control what delimiter is used. The text editing programs I use seem to use but when I opened the exported qif file with emacs, I saw only ^M's. I used emacs to create my test file from scratch, and it apparently uses 's. Eventually I'll use shell script programming or Fortran (maybe C which as I recall uses only ^M line delimiters in file writes) to write the qif file from a Palm Pilot moved data file. (I have all that working, I just need to know how to write a qif file to track the cash expenses I key in to a Palm Pilot).

I used the format I saw in the export. Odd, but highly possible, that the Mac version can't read what it writes. I guess I'll find out tonight when I have time to debug.

No, I haven't tried to import a sample export yet. Tonight. i didn't think I'd need to debug it at this level. ;-)

Another question that I can experiment with when I get it working, but would like to know up front: can I leave the six "A" (address) lines out since they aren't used? Can any of the optional fields be left out of the syntax, or does that break things? (my first try didn't have them. My second try did. Both failed).

Thanks for the quick reply!

John

You can omit practically everything; definitely the address lines. I successfully imported a transaction with only a date and amount. And I imported another transaction with no amount.

Thanks to John Pollard for answering. I've now solved the problem.

1. I did a qif export for transactions on a selected date.
2. I verified (after deleting those in the Cash Account) that they imported just fine.
3. I examined the line feed difference. I was wrong, it is not evident in emacs, but is evident with a Unix "more".
4. I created a file verbatim to the file that worked, but with regular line delimeters.
5. It still imported just fine!!!
6. I pared down this file and found that the syntax below imports just fine. (Took out the empty A lines, etc., step by step, testing at each step).
7. The difference I see is that line 5 below (TCash) was omitted in the test above. Anyway, I now have it working, with a normally created line separated file, and the two digit year dates work in Mac Quicken 2007.
8. Now I can program what I want.
9. Thanks again!

!Account NCash Account D X TCash ^ !Type:Cash D10/12/08 PFoodtown MMemo 1 goes here T-1.00 LGroceries ^ D10/12/08 PGasoline MMemo 2 goes here T-2.00 LAuto:Fuel ^ D10/12/08 PNY Times, WSJ, tea MMemo 3 goes here T-3.00 LWAWA ^