I decided to take the plunge back to Quicken based on that link that says it takes a QIF import. No free trial, but the 30-day return policy seemed good enough.
I did a QIF export of “transactions with categories”, whatever that means, from SEE Finance. I then imported that to Quicken Deluxe. I forget how long it took, but it succeeded. I believe the dialog box said it might be 300,000 some transactions.
Looking in there, I do see dozens of historical accounts; probably everything I ever had going back to my 1993 days with Quicken. I had to re-hide all the closed ones; tedious but once-and-done. I also had to set up my online banking direct connects, but that’s all working now, too. My list of custom Categories are all there, which are important for tax purposes for my rental property. I’m sure I’m going to have to set up a bunch of “QuickFill Rules” from scratch to compensate for the corresponding feature from SEE Finance.
It looks like it’s going to work fine.
It feels good to be back using a product that is managed by more than a single person. I hope Quicken doesn’t start getting buggy and marginalizing Mac users again, which is why I originally left.
SEE Finance’s limited feature/OS-compatibility combinations are the reason I haven’t upgraded my main Mac to Big Sur. So that feels good to have that obstacle behind me.
Yeah, as time goes on, the feature set grows. There are no more annual dated versions: the last one was Quicken 2017, which is no longer supported. The subscription app was introduced after Quicken 2017 and gets new features as time goes on. (No more having to wait for the next annual release, the features are released as soon as they’re ready.) Here’s a link to the release notes archive for every version of the subscription app: https://www.quicken.com/support/subscription-release-quicken-mac-release-notes
Thanks for all the info. Does anyone have any experience updating quicken 2004 or 2005 ? I am currently using that ancient version, on an old MacMini, have tried the 2015 version and some of the alternatives and found them unacceptable, but would like to modernize. I also would like advice on exactly how to set up a spreadsheet to hold exported CSV or QIF data. When I’ve tried that I get a total mishmash, probably because I am lacking the technical expertise of many on this forum,
I find having Quicken download most of our accounts is a big help. (A few we haven’t gotten to work yet, for various reasons.) We don’t run as many transactions as Glen, but the type on some of the bills is so damn small that I find it hard to read. We also have my business, rental property, and we’re starting to get into retirement income. I like getting quick updates on credit cards because we’ve had fraud and mischarging problems in the past. We never were tempted to try using Quicken to access our bank account. Our small local bank has excellent customer service that I have gotten used to.
One big reason I keep all transactions going back 20 years “live” is when I have to look up things like when did we buy an appliance or do repairs on our rental appliance. When a dryer died a couple of weeks back, a quick check showed that we bought it in 2005, so it wasn’t worth repairing if it wasn’t easy. It’s also valuable to have a log of who did what repairs.
For historic records, I would recommend printing annual reports. Keep the PDFs on your computer (backed up to external storage like a USB drive or encrypted cloud storage) and file paper copies in a cabinet. This way you won’t lose the information if something should happen in the future where you can no longer run the software.
I print annual records to PDF too, and your remind me that I should figure out how do get the records I want from Quicken 2020. However, annual records are not helpful if you aren’t sure what year you did something, like buying a new appliance. That’s when a Search on a large archive of live transactions can save a lot of time over looking through many annual files.
Trying to print out records from Quicken 2020 proved an educational experience. Simply put, I can find no report that offers to show a full year of transactions from the whole file, or all past transactions. It is possible to export all register transactions to a CSV file that can be opened by Excel, but it does not export “Hidden” accounts, such as closed credit card accounts which may still have important information not duplicated elsewhere. I don’t have time now to dig down to see if there’s something hidden somewhere or to fiddle with options to try to find a way around that limitation. I hope I’m missing something. If there is no work-around, it would be a serious limitation.
Chris, I opened my q2017 file a few days ago and the app offered me an update. Don’t remember the version number but IIRC I got another update back in Feb or Mar ‘21…
The last version of Quicken 2017 was v4.8.6, and was released in December 2019. If you were running an earlier version, you would have been prompted to update to the latest available (4.8.6).
BTW, when you install an update for any app that uses Sparkle as the updating mechanism, the previous copy of the app will be moved to the Trash. Which is handy in case you need access to it! (You could go into your Trash and see what version of Quicken 2017 you were using before the update.)
I don’t think there were any updates in 2021, but you will periodically get prompted to upgrade to the subscription app at a discount, which can look a lot like an update prompt. (Those discounts can sometimes be substantial; if you ever want to see the current upgrade offer, you can choose the Quicken > Show Current Offers menu item in Quicken 2017 or earlier.)
Beg pardon, Chris - I’m on qDeluxe v6.3.2, not q2017. Yet another version with its own feature set, or just another name for the Quicken subscription product?
Starter, Deluxe, and Premier are different subscription tiers, which enable different features. But they all use the same “Quicken” app, which is currently version 6.3.3.
Starter doesn’t have 12-month budgets or investment accounts; there’s not much difference between Deluxe and Premier other than adding bill pay services for any bank account and a special phone number for priority support. There are bigger differences between tiers for the Windows version of Quicken. (BTW, the subscription lets you use Quicken on whatever platform you want: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, web. If you’re curious about Quicken Windows, you can try it out in Boot Camp, Parallels, or VMware, or run it without emulation via CrossOver, even on Apple silicon I think. Sign in to Quicken Windows with the same Quicken ID you use in Quicken Mac, no extra purchase necessary.)
Double-checking — I have 2017. Can I trial Deluxe in parallel without deleting 2017 in case I want to go back to it? Maybe importing a backup copy into the trial Deluxe? I do keep my Quicken data on an external drive so I imagine it is safe if I trial with a backup that I can put on my desktop before import. My current Quicken data goes back to 1993 and I don’t want to lose it, as others have mentioned, to track down things like appliance purchases.
When I upgraded from 2007, Quicken Deluxe just read from the old data file into a newly created one, leaving the old one alone, and I can still launch and run 2007 with the old data file if I want, so I’d imagine it should be the same for 2017. It wouldn’t hurt to have backups (which you want anyways), and to upgrade from a copy of your old data file, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
Yes, Quicken will import a copy of your Quicken 2017 file, and leave the original untouched. “Quicken” and “Quicken 2017” are two completely different apps from macOS’s point of view, and they won’t interfere with each other. You can even run them both at the same time, and compare them side-by-side…
