1. Home
  2. Quicken Personal Finance
  3. Operation Modernisation: now what...

Operation Modernisation: now what...

I'm currently in Quicken 2002, UK version. I want to upgrade to Quicken

2011 hopefully, since I've read of others in the UK who've done it. Another possibility is (wait for it...) Quicken Essentials for Mac, since I recently had a play and whilst it's not -quite- there for my use yet it's actually not too far away.

Either way, I'm first going to have to move the data off 2002, and I have about 16 years worth.

So, first up I speak with someone I know in the States who runs 2011. We try importing my file - nope, it point blank refuses to import. Tells me it won't deal with European data files and tells me to carry on using the old version. So...failure.

Next up, export from old version to QIF including all accounts etc.. This seems to work, but then I try importing into 2011. Hilarity - it tells me it has 'successfully' imported 15k transactions. Lovely, there are 50k+ transactions in the file. So nope, I can't seem to go from

2002 to 2011.

Next up, Essentials. This won't take anything except an OFX file, which

2002 will not produce. The advice is to try Quicken for Mac 2007 or Quicken 2010 (latest at the time they wrote the release notes) and then export to OFX. Right, we have a copy of Quicken for Mac 2007 that came with an old machine, so we try that. Into Quicken 2002, export QIF for Mac. Over to 2007 for the Mac and it -appears- to import, but it gets the balances hopelessly wrong and failures to import one account at all

- "name too long". Also, my accounts are now in dollars instead of Sterling. Despite the wrong import I decide to see if I can move that data into Essentials. I can't - it fails without any explanation (just says "can't move this file into Essentials" without actually telling me

-why-).

Hmm.

So so far I can't go from Quicken 2002 UK -> 2011. I can't go from 2002 UK to Mac 2007. I can't go from Mac 2007 -> Essentials anyway. What the hell.

How do I get this nonsense updated? The only program to successfully import it all so far is GnuCash, but GnuCash has been crashing a lot and doesn't work in the way I'd like things to anyway. Annoyingly, there's no export from GnuCash into anything useful either. Moneydance hasn't been -too- far out, neither has iBank 4 (they all appear to have transactions dated the day of import, all spuriously listed as transfers into what seems to be the last account in the list).

All ideas gratefully received.

Cheers, Ian

Reply to
Ian McCall
Loading thread data ...

OK, interestingly I just tried exporting to QIF in 2002, then starting a new data file in 2002 and importing back in. It too did the 15k transactions thing and got the balances hopelessly, hopelessly wrong.

Ian

Reply to
Ian McCall

Maybe something here will help:

formatting link

Reply to
Zaidy036

As I think you've discovered, I don't think it has to do with trying to go from Q2002 to Q2011; the basic QIF file capability should work between any two versions of Quicken. QIF file formats didn't change.

There may well be a 15,000 transaction limit to QIF file importing, though I have no specific knowledge of it.

But that shouldn't prevent the conversion; just, perhaps, make it bit more cumbersome. You should be able to do it one account at a time.

Be advised: QIF files have no means of expressing currency. Before you begin to import; you should set "multicurrency support" in the Quicken file, then set your Home currency to pound sterling or whatever you want it to be. That should cause newly created Quicken accounts to be in the currency of your choice. If you have some accounts in other then the Home currency; you'll have to create them in Quicken before importing their transactions and specify their currency during account creation - once an account has been created, you can't change its currency.

And, if you must import one account at a time; you may have to, or may be better off, creating each account in Quicken before importing ... to insure the account currency is correct.

While using QIF file export/import doesn't, itself, create any need for an intermediate version of Quicken; you might still benefit from getting the U.S. version of Q2004. Q2004 is the last U.S. version of Quicken that placed no restrictions on importing QIF files. If you can get your UK data into Q2004 U.S., Q2011 should have no trouble converting the Q2004 data.

If you must import one account at a time, and you do not use Q2004 as an intermediate version; you might find the following post useful:

formatting link
As stated in the post; this method assumes the Quicken account exists when you start the import.

Actually, it's an QXF file: and I believe the only Quicken for Windows versions that create QXF files are Q2010 and Q2011.

Other than that, I have no meaningful knowledge of Quicken for the Mac. But I can tell you that a ton of Quicken Essentials users have complained about its lack of capability. Intuit always said it was starting over with QE, and they planned to add capabilities over time (I think a few have already been announced); but at this point, I suspect you'd be disappointed in QE.

Reply to
John Pollard

Well, what a total fuss. First off, I discover that almost nothing correctly understands the QIF file Quicken 2002 exports. GnuCash did, nothing else did, including Quicken itself. I then notice various other programs have dates of 1903 in there - wonderful, I mean my account data is fairly extensive but not -that- extensive.

I wrote a short program to convert all the dates to four-digit and move them to US format (ie. from my d/MM/yy to MM/d/yyyy). OK - now various things will import it but they end up duplicating transactions, so still no dice.

Finally decide to try MS Money. Yes, it's been discontinued but various things say they convert from its file format so it might be a path outwards. I snapshot my VMware install of Windows and then...err...'acquire' a copy of MS Money purely for the purpose of file conversion. 2004. Success! It reads the Quicken 2002 original .QDF file no problem. So into Quicken 2011 and...ah. Failure again - it requires an MS Money 2007 or 2008 file. More hunting and faffing and I have an install of Money 2007. Installing this was a bit of a chore, it insisted in various long downloads during the install process, no idea what since anything I've my XP installation should be in advance of anything it would have required. Anyway, eventually I have an install of 2007 which upgrades my previous Money 2004 file with a small amount of daftness (it now says it doesn't support my custom currency 'pound' and asks me to pick a standard one. I pick 'British pound' and give it an exchange rate of 1 pound = 1 British pound. Madness, it was Money that chose 'pound' rather than 'British pound' in the first place. It then hangs and I have to terminate using Task Manager, but then re-opens on second attempt and my data is there.

Back into Quicken 2011, and I finally have my data. Rollback to the snapshot VM I took which removes all trace of MS Money and any dubious things the downloads may have done to my system, and I've got a working copy of everything. Some oddness - it couldn't bring in my mortgage properly and seems to think I have a ton of overdue bills from 2001 (none of which actually -were- bills...) but with some relatively small amount of manual pratting about this could be made workable.

The process has been somewhat less than smooth, rather stunningly so in fact. However, I now know I've got a migration path out of Quicken 2002 to something more modern, so I'm off back round the various Mac finance apps to see if they'll do me, and if not I'll be fetching Quicken 2011 for Windows from ebay. This has been utterly teethpulling so far, hopefully the last stage will be fine.

Cheers, Ian

Reply to
Ian McCall

BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.