I wonder if it wasn’t where Quicken 2007 was, but where New Quicken was installed.
We know that Quicken 2007 is 32-bit so won’t run on Catalina or later. And new Quicken (let’s just call it Quicken 2021) is 64-bit so it can. But, the Quicken migration program used to convert from Quicken 2007 is also 32-bit, so it won’t run on Catalina.
So let’s say you upgrade your computer to Catalina, buy Quicken 2021, then try to convert your old data file. How can it convert?
The answer is that in that case, Quicken transmits your Q2007 data file up to a cloud server run by Quicken. The cloud server runs the migration utility on some older version of macOS, then the resulting converted file is downloaded back to your Mac.
I’m wondering if something in that process is what caused your migration difficulties.
(One might wonder why it is that the migration program is still 32-bit, and furthermore, no Q2007 data conversion bug has ever been fixed, at least none that I reported. My suspicion is that Intuit didn’t give the new Quicken company the source for the migration program – the program that reads the Quicken 2007 data file and creates the intermediate conversion extract file. I also find it suspicious that the new Quicken company doesn’t seem to ever use Quicken 2007’s internal algorithms as a guide to enhancing Quicken 2021’s weak spots. Maybe they don’t have the source for Q2007 either.)
I switched from Quicken 2007 to Quicken Deluxe a year ago and have accepted it more grudgingly. A major reason for my change was that my bank shifted to a new format for qfx files which Quicken 2007 could not import. Another was that I didn’t want all my financial data in a dead-end format.
Importing was painful and all the damage to my investment and retirement funds was not immediately obvious. While the totals came out right, the history before the import is gone. I can recover data from other financial records (e.g. when we bought an appliance so we can decide if it’s worth repairing), but individual transactions are gone, so Quicken can’t tell me what were my holdings in 2005, or how my investment accounts have changed since then.
I have yet to find much of anything useful for retirement-planning and related issues. It may be well hidden in the online files, but I’m finding it hard to track Minimum Required Distributions or other retirement income for tax purposes.
The default categories Quicken uses when important transactions are rigid, annoying and only minimally customizable. Multiple levels of coding can be somewhat useful, but I don’t need or want all of them because they don’t match what I’ve been doing for years, making comparisons impossible. Automating downloading of categories from credit card companies is convenient, but I have to change many of the categories because they are wrong or useless. Quicken has an option for automatically associating a payee or payment source with a particular code, but some payment sources – notably ebay and Amazon – put codes identifying individual transactions into the payee field, and Quicken thinks that means a new payee.
Quicken does seem to be still tinkering with the new version, and I hope it eventually will help with the retirement issues. Right now it’s close to useless in that area. I have found the online Help of little help with much of anything. Features like importing categories from transaction files make it hard to customize to match your accounting preferences. Sometime its selections or defaults seem downright dumb, and sometimes I worry Quicken may be losing things. It’s useful, but I wouldn’t say that I love it.
Unix has had hard links to directories for a long time, maybe since the beginning. In fact every directory in your system has 2+n hard links to it—the link from its parent, ., and all the ..'s in its subdirectories. There used to be /etc/link and /etc/unlink commands to allow creating and deleting hard links to directories on the command line (limited to root of course, being so much code assumes . and .. are the only things that introduce loops in the file system “tree”.)
I went through something similar a couple of years ago. I ran a number of packages in parallel for a month or so, downloading (or entering) transactions in all of them, reconciling everything at the end of the month in each, etc. When I hit a showstopper or something that just worked better elsewhere in one, I dropped it, until the final one remaining was Quicken Deluxe. Not that it’s perfect, I have a whole list of things I’d like to see changed in it, but it’s better for my needs than any of the others I tried.
I’m primarily a PC user but provide technical support Macs. I’m still using Quicken 2000 on Windows10! LOL I stopped upgrading when they charged $60, didn’t import prior data, and that was back in 2002. 2000 does everything I need. Account management, balancing, forecasting, basic reports. It doesn’t work perfectly, but it works well enough.
I too made the switch from Quicken to MoneyDance. It’s a bit short on some features but it works with Macs.
I recall Quicken was originally a Mac product, then went Windows and forgot about Macs. I struggled with Quicken for a while but it was worse being a Quicken user outside the US as the local Australian reseller of Quicken was absolutely not interested in supporting any Mac users of Quicken especially in facilitiating downloading anything Australian banking. I had to get the Canadian version to work with Australian taxes.
In reading this review of Quicken, I find myself saying that nothing has changed with Quicken and I made the right decision to move to MoneyDance.
I used Quicken for many years starting around 1993(!), when it was feature rich and almost bug free. I watched Intuit make it continually more buggy and effectively abandoned it, until I decided to jump ship. I think some coverage at tidbits(??) may have been what helped me find SEE Finance, which rescued me from that mess.
But I’m not thrilled with it these days and need to get a paid upgrade to work with Big Sur. So Quicken Deluxe has me intrigued.
My main question is: will QD import everything from SF?
I still use Quicken for Mac 2007 Lion Compatible, but as a QIF bridge between my primary desktop finance application and two other finance applications. Here is my story.
I used Quicken for Mac (Q4M) for years on my Macs and Standalone’s PocketQuicken (PQ) on my PalmOS devices. When the iPhone came out and the App Store opened, I expected an iOS version of PQ to be released but it never happened (Intuit refused to support iOS and cancelled Standalone’s license to make PQ). Thus I had to search for a replacement. I ended up using the late Hardy Macia’s PocketMoney (PM) on my iPhone (he had it for NewtonOS originally) with QIF import from Q4M. Later Hardy released PocketMoney Desktop (PMD) with PocketMoney Sync for WiFi syncing between the Mac & iOS versions. Then tragedy struck with the passing of Hardy in May 2013. PM limped along but was eventually bought by a Swiss Italian who promised a vastly improved version. Well he lied and the “new” version is just a licensed copy of the iCompta app.
OK, I tried Quicken 15 or 16 but it wasn’t as good as Q4M2007 plus it did not have a fully functional iOS app (it was read-only). I tried the latest version of Quicken last fall but it STILL didn’t have a fully functional iOS app, plus it was now subscription only. The latter makes it totally dead for me. So I went looking again.
I finally settled on two Mac applications that ALMOST match PocketMoney: iFinance and the ORIGINAL iCompta. However, they have problems with QIFs exported from PMD so I export from it, import into Q4M2007LC, then export a QIF from it and then import that one into both iCompta & iFinance.
My iMac can’t go past MacOS 10.13.6 (High Sierra) and iOS 14.4.2 was the last version of iOS that will run PMiOS so I refuse to update my iPhone past it. Fortunately there is a developer who is writing a close version of the original PMiOS that will run on newer iOS versions. If I have to replace my iMac with a newer version, I’ll be forced to use just iCompta, iFinance, or both full-time.
I only need to balance my checkbook and I manually enter each check. So, after eons using Quicken, SEE Finance has worked fine for me. It took a little getting used to, but my CPA son told me where to find things.
The register is almost as tight as Quicken and data input is easy. There’s no “Congratulations” when you balance the register. Just a gloriously simple “equal sign.”
If your requirement truly is nothing more than balancing a checkbook, you can do that with a simple spreadsheet. I’ve been using Excel for this for a long time. My sheet has 12 columns, modeled after a paper transaction register:
A: Date. The date I wrote the check, or the date where the transaction is scheduled to take place (for electronic transactions)
B: Cleared. When the check cleared or the date the transaction is posted on the bank’s web site. I typically log on to my bank’s web site every day in order to see what posted that day. I update the spreadsheet rows based on what I see.
C: Check number. I use short text codes for other kinds of transactions, including ATM, BP (electronic bill payment), DDS (direct deposit), DEB pre-authorized debit/ACH, FEE, and INT (interest)
D: Description
E: T. I put a “T” in here for tax-deductible transactions, so I can quickly search for them
F: •. I put a "•* character in here after I see the transaction posted on the bank’s web site
G: √. I put a “√” character in here after I see the transaction on my monthly statement.
H: Debit. Dollar amount for any debit (check, payment, etc.). Blank if the transaction is a credit.
I: Credit. Dollar amount for any credit (deposit, interest, etc.). Blank if the transaction is a debit.
J: Balance. The running balance. Computed as the value on the previous row, minus the debit column, plus the credit column.
K: • Balance. The running balance, only counting rows where there is a character in the “•” column. Computed with an “if” statement. If the “•” column is blank, copy the value on the previous row, otherwise compute it like the balance (previous row, minus debit, plus credit).
This lets me see the running balance of only the transactions that have posted to the bank’s web site.
L: √ Balance. The running balance, only counting rows where there is a character in the “√” column. This lets me see the running balance of only the transactions that have been reported on my monthly statement.
When I reconcile my statements, the procedure is pretty simple:
Go through the statement. For each transaction, double-check the amount of credit/debit and put a “√” in the “√” column (G) if they match. If they don’t match, figure out why, then correct the amount.
When done, compare the value at the bottom of the “√ Balance” column with the balance from the statement. If they match, then everything reconciles. If they don’t match then there’s a mistake - re-check the statement.
I can also reconcile against the inter-statement values on the bank’s web site doing the same thing with the “•” column (F).
To make it a bit easier to browse the table, I keep the table sorted by Cleared, then Check No, then Date then Description.
I create a separate file for each calendar year (with year-straddling transactions appearing in the year where the transaction cleared).
I realize that financial apps like Quicken do a lot more than this, but if you really don’t need to do anything more than balance a checkbook, a simple spreadsheet like this is quick and easy. And it’s pretty much free, since everybody can get a free spreadsheet app (Apple bundles Numbers with Macs and you can download LibreOffice).
I too was impacted negatively by the demise of Quicken back in 2007… What a feeling of absolute betrayal! Without going into my long saga to find a better finance app, after thoroughly testing several options over a 2 year span, I finally found “iBank”. I would not go back to Quicken if you paid me.
iBank’s name was changed maybe 4-5 years ago to “Banktivity”. It is without any doubt on my part THE MOST EFFECTIVE AND ROBUST personal finance software I have ever seen and used in 30 years. It is kept up to date, has excellent tech support and offers a relatively inexpensive subscription service that enables me to access my account and manage our rather complicated finances on any device (iphone, ipad, and my M1 Macbook Air). I give it 5 STARS.
Glenn, I’m a bit late to this conversation, but I wanted to comment on how similar my experience with Quicken is to your own, from early adoption of Quicken 98 through the 2017 Lion update, and right down to a late-2015 iMac with a failing Fusion drive (recently replaced with a 4TB SSD while awaiting Apple’s new, notional prosumer large-screen iMacs). It can indeed be difficult to give up on the past, especially if one is a long-time Mac user like me.
In my case, I’d been aware for some years that Q2007 would soon become more and more difficult to run (it was already becoming tough for me to read its unconfigurable, tiny register text), and I knew I had no interest in maintaining a separate CPU or partition for the purpose.
I’d been keeping an eye on the features-list updates from Quicken’s new owners. It was a relief to see that they seemed to be listening to user requests for “new” features to get implemented (I had a relatively short list of my own must-haves), and that they also had a relatively clear roadmap which they were being disclosive about.
I’d looked at alternative utilities, but like you, decided that I’d gotten too accustomed to Quicken’s larger set of features. Everything else seemed either incomplete or oddly designed.
Once those features seemed to be well in place, I bought in. That was in December of 2018. Thanks to my work schedule and other commitments, I didn’t actually import existing data to it until the middle of the following year, and it took another year of learning the new UI and cleaning up the imported aberrations before I started cautiously keeping two sets of books, as identically as possible.
At the end of 2020, I decided that 2007’s increasingly failing WebConnect capability and limited data-set capacity were too much to put up with, and that I’d become comfortable enough with Deluxe to rely on it entirely. My 2007 database is now a fixed archive of transaction history. Any remaining feature gaps I could complain about in Deluxe are more likely a result of my not yet having found their counterparts than actual omission on the developers’ part.