q09 questions- retirement planner and Help

hmmm - Q2009 dlx -

top menu command bar -> Help -> Quicken Help ? top menu command bar -> Tax -> Tax Planner top menu command bar -> Planning -> your choice

Can't use Quicken Help, as explained.

Don't want the Tax Planner. I can do that. Retirement planner was something unique.

I don't have a Planning icon on my command bar. Oh, ok, I had to customize my bar but the only option was Retirement Planning. What option was it under? I always got to it from a sub menu before but still can't see it. But thanks for resurrecting it for me.

Well, this is extremely weird. My command bar now has an icon titled "Retirement Planner", but when clicked, it takes me online to an ad for Quicken Online Payroll. Something is really screwed up.

jo

Time to re-install Quicken.

Well, this is extremely weird. My command bar now has an icon titled "Retirement Planner", but when clicked, it takes me online to an ad for Quicken Online Payroll. Something is really screwed up.

jo

for me - this was the top menu level bar - with text commands - not the row of icons...

and HELP is only on the top level text menu bar..

please keep things separate in the discussion - top level text menu command bar VS icon bar

BTW - if you Help About - what does it say for Version + Release

Ok, let's back up so I can be more precise.

Am using Quicken H & B V2009 Release 7, just installed about a week ago.

I had no options for Planning initially, as a primary text menu choice or under any other text menu that I could see. When I customized the icon bar to add Retirement Planning (I don't remember if there were other Planner options because I was only interested in that one), it added an icon with the correct text under the icon, but when the icon was used, it took me to a screen for Online Intuit payroll.

I searched the Live Community questions and found that in order for Planning to show up as an option anywhere, it has to be turned on in Preferences (this is either different from previous releases, or the installation turned off that preference, which I doubt). I turned it on. That gave me the Planning text menu option and the Planning tab, but the problem with the Retirement Planning icon remains, despite my removing it and readding it.

Clicking on the Planning tab takes me directly to the results screen for the retirement scenario I set up in Quicken H & B 2008. Choosing Options--> Review or change options, takes me to the same Online Intuit Payroll screen. And now I notice that under the Planning text menu option, there are a number of Planner choices, all with "*" at the end of them (eg College, Retirement, Home Purchase). They all try to take me to the same Online Intuit Payroll page. I have never seen the "*" at the end of a menu option before but it must have some significance relating to this problem.

So, I seem to have a very confused Q installation, or I am missing something very basic that has changed between V 2008 (and 2006 etc, etc) and V 2009. The only way I can get any information about Retirement planning is by clicking the Planning tab, or by choosing the Goto Planning under the Planning text menu option. I get a results graph from my last Q H&B, but I can't change any assumptions.

Have I left any information out? Thanks for your time.

jo

Still have no resolution of this. Can anyone offer suggestions?

It certainly seems like something is corrupted; your data and/or your installation.

For example: if you convert a file that used Quicken planners ... Q2009 should automatically elect to display the "Planning" menu choice and the "Planning" tab. And that should allow you to open, and modify, the Retirement planner ... either from the Planning menu choice or the Planning tab. You should not have to go to the Setup tab and tell Quicken to "Show" the Planning tab when the converted file used planning data.

I don't have any idea which corruption is more likely, though I suppose the bit about the asterisks alongside the Planning menu choices makes me think of a corrupted installation. But if you can't recreate the problem in a New Quicken file (where you probably *would* have to use Setup to get access to Planning), that would suggest data corruption.

For reinstalling: I would reinstall to a totally new folder. Here are a couple of links about reinstalling.

As for repairing data corruption; Validating a Quicken Copy of your data is the only real option I know. You could try it on the converted data first, and if that didn't help, you could uninstall Q2009, reinstall Q2008 and Validate a Quicken Copy of the Q2008 data; then have Q2009 convert that Validated Copy. [You could combine the reinstall with the Validate of the old data ... reinstalling Q2008 once Q2009 has been uninstalled, Validating, uninstalling Q2008, then reinstalling Q2009.]

Thanks, John. I'll experiment with all your suggestions. Have you ever heard of the "*" phenomenon before, and if so, what it means?

jo

I don't recall anything like that.

Well, John, I took the easy way out and reinstalled. All the problems that I've mentioned went away. I have no idea what was corrupted or misinstalled the first time. Both installations were updated to v7 so that's not it.

Unfortunately, I now have noticed a new problem. I have only a single backup set in the BACKUP folder, despite having been in and out of Quicken daily since 10/28. I haven't changed anything in the backup preferences, where I allow for 5 backup copies.

So NOW what have I overlooked???

BTW: Q2008 was a joy compared to Q2009. I can't yet distinguish any features that work better or are new, and it is dramatically slower. I've got an old system, but if there wasn't much changed between releases, why is the current one such a dog? I suppose I shouldn't complain, since I only paid $19.99 for it, but I *am* curious.

Jo

Not sure. Normally, Quicken creates its automatic backups once every 7 days, depending on how often you run Quicken. Maybe today is the day for it to create the next one.

I don't know. My system is so old, and I overload it so much, I have very little expectation of speed. And I'm not sure I'd know how to determine the cause, or what to do to fix it, if I found it - I'm pretty much maxed out on this machine, and trying to hold off getting a new one for as long as possible.

I figured out the backup situation too. It shows how often I have looked at those files that I didn't remember that Quicken only makes those backups once every 7 days. So, everything now seems to be working as well as Q2009 can work. I could add memory to this dinosaur, altho it has 512MB, but it's probably throwing away money. Or maybe the old memory is so cheap, if you can find it, that it would be an interesting experiment. I'm too embarassed to tell you how old this system is :{.