Add option for 2-line/row display in Quicken For Mac (175 Legacy Votes +2 Merged Votes)

Unknown

Even with Q17 for Windows I had the option of using a 2 line register. The same with every other version w/Windows but with Windows 17 for Mac.  Why?

All goes back to customer support.

jacobs

Even with Q17 for Windows I had the option of using a 2 line register. The same with every other version w/Windows but with Windows 17 for Mac.  Why?

Not customer support, really, but development resources -- or lack thereof. There is a long list of features that we in the customer base have asked Quicken to add to the Mac product. Some were in the legacy Mac program (Quicken 2007); some are in Quicken for Windows. There aren't enough developers to tackle all these requests quickly; new/improved features do come, just not as fast as anyone would like.

Management has to decide how to prioritize all those customer requests, and whatever they decide to tackle earlier leaves something else undone -- and some customers unhammpy. Creating a two-line display falls into the category of something that currently works but some users want an option to make work differently. They've done some of those, but more of the development work seems to be devoted to creating features which are not yet part of Quicken for Mac.

Unknown

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled 2 line display for check registers in the Mac 2018.


PLEASE, PLEASE add back in the 2 line display for check registers in the Mac 2018 version.  Please.

RCC

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled two line registry.


I used Quicken for Windows many years ago.  In that, they had an option to have a two line registry.  It's not in MAC version.  When I look at my setup as I have it on my desktop on my laptop I can not see the right last 3 columns without manipulating my window to the left.  This could be resolved by having the two line option.  
I've been using Quicken ever since it's startup. First the windows version and now MAC.  Please look into this.  I've been looking into Bantivity which has this available.  I'd much rather stay with a company I know and trust.  But it just may come down to functionality for me to make the change.

jacobs

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Merging.


RCC, you are correct that the two-line register format doesn't exist currently in Quicken Mac.

Many longtime Quicken Windows or Quicken Mac users find this jarring when they first switch to Quicken Mac. Some of us have found that, after adjusting to the new interface, it works well for us, but others have found it very problematic -- particularly people trying to use it on a laptop like you.

You may know this, but in case you don't, you can change which columns are visible, and the width of columns. If you find there are columns you don't use, you can hide them by clicking on the Columns icon in the bottom, right toolbar and unchecking them. To narrow a column, in the column header line, hover over the dividing line between columns until the cursor changes to a two-sided arrow, and then click and drag to the left. (Any such changes you make need to be repeated in other registers, which is a bit of a pain, but fortunately something you only need to set up once.)

One other technique some users find helpful in dealing with limited space is to double-click on an account in the left sidebar. That opens the register in its own window -- without the sidebar, so you have more room for your columns.

Longer-term, you should visit this "idea" post requesting the two-line register be developed for Quicken Mac, and click the blue Vote button in the upper right. The more votes idea topics get in this forum, the more likely the developers will address the need in the future.

The product manager has explained in the past that the one-line display was created using tools built-into the Mac operating system for displaying lists of data, while creating a two-line register would require extensive manual coding to bypass the Mac's default. Of course, nothing is impossible in programming; it's all a matter of how much work is involved and how important it is to achieve the result. That's where voting in this forum can be helpful in shaping the developers' views. You might also add a post to that thread about why this feature is important to you; telling the developers that you typically like to view a certain set of columns, and you can't view them all on your laptop helps them understand the need/request better.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: two line registry.

Patrick Frink

When is Quicken MGT going to get off their verticles and bring Quicken Mac into a product which mirrors Quicken for Win?  For years Mac users have asked Qkn for the ability to have a 2 line register.  Those of us whom have bought into Quicken since it's beginning and have moved from Win to Mac .... Yea, we know - this will be trashed/deleted.  If y'all don't appreciate us as customers and supporters merely keep up the continued lack of attitude. 

jacobs

@Patrick Frink First, you should know that this is primarily a user support forum. Ranting about Quicken's shortcomings are being read by fellow Quicken users, not Quicken management. 

In terms of the substance of your gripe, I don't know why you perceive lack of a feature in the program to be lack of appreciation for customers. They do not generate enough revenue from Quicken Mac to have a large enough development team to add all the features users want over a short period of time, so we get slow and steady improvements -- but it's slow progress because there are many hundreds of features users want them to add to Quicken Mac. At the current pace, it will take years for all of these features to be built.

The developers have been concentrating primarily on things the program cannot do, versus things it can do but could perhaps do better or differently. The two-line register is one of the latter; you can accomplish everything with the current register, even though some users might prefer the alternative of a two-line interface. This may be the most important missing feature for you in Quicken Mac, but understand that there are other missing features -- some reports and transfers in budgets, two name two -- which currently prevent some users from successfully using Quicken at all.

I've seen nothing to indicate that the developers or management are thumbing their nose at Quicken users; to the contrary, I think they want to make Quicken Mac a robust product -- but they have limited resources and massive demands, so it's going to take longer to get there. I'm not saying we should all be happy with the pace of development, only that your anger at their intent seems misplaced.

sheilabergstedt

Where do I go to vote for 2 line display for Quicken Mac?

sheilabergstedt

Nevermind, I found it!

TechnoJock

I'm sure this is not a new idea - but didn't find it. How about a 2-line register for Mac version since it's been in Quicken since the good ole DOS days?

Quicken Anja

Hello @TechnoJock,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community and post your Idea request.

I went ahead and merged your Idea with this existing Idea thread on the same topic. Ideas are reviewed by our Development and Product teams to see what features people would like to have available in the future. This way other users who have the same or a similar request can vote on your idea by clicking the up arrow (see below).

Please, be sure to add your own vote as well.

jacobs

@TechnoJock  You're right: this is not a new idea!  Users have been asking for it since the day the new Quicken Mac came out -- so there's an existing idea thread to vote for it. [A moderator has moved your post into the existing thread for this topic.] But you should still register your vote for it if you want to see this change: click here to go to the first post in this multi-page thread, and scroll down to the large blue box under the first post, then click on the little gray arrow to add your vote. 

I'd also suggest you add a comment to the thread explaining why you consider this important. I can tell you from experience that just saying "doing it because it was like this in the old days" carries relatively little weight with the developers.  But if you use Quicken on a small laptop and can't fit all your columns, or your workflow requires often viewing two registers side by side, or you need to have other apps open alongside Quicken to do your work -- those types of use case explanations are more likely to resonate with the developers.

That said, I'll make two quick comments:

(1) Many of us who had come to the modern Quicken Mac from either the old Quicken Mac 2007 and its predecessors or Quicken Windows have had the immediate early reaction that we miss the two-line register and want it back. Some still feel that way after using it for years, but some -- and I'm in this camp -- have come to like the Quicken Mac registers more than the old 2-line register. I was jumping between old Quicken Mac 2007 and modern Quicken Mac for a number of years before I finally switched for good, but now when I go back to Quicken 2007, the registers seem dated and more difficult to use than what I've become accustomed to in modern Quicken Mac. In modern Quicken Mac, the smooth continuous scrolling is so much better than the page-by-page jumping of Quicken 2007, and columns can be shown/hidden however you want, in whatever order you want, at whatever width you want, on a register-by-register basis, to best fit your work -- a huge improvement over the old, static two-line register, in my opinion. No one really likes change when it comes to using software, and it takes unlearning muscle memory… and not everyone will agree. But if you're new to Quicken Mac, I'd just say to use it for awhile and give it a chance, because you may find you don't dislike it as much after some time.

(2) The developers have previously explained that the registers in Quicken take a lot of advantage of tools in macOS for the layout and display of transactions on the screen, and creating a two-line register would require bypassing all that built-in help to hand-craft what would be a much more complex screen display. That's not to say anything is impossible to program, but it would be time-consuming to implement and might have some performance hits, which is why this hasn't, at least until now, become a priority for the developers.

Chris_QPW

Two observations from a Quicken Windows user, and a person that "has heard the history" of Quicken Mac.

First off.  At one stroke it might seem that Quicken Windows user/old Quicken Mac users have the "advantage" with the two line register, but what this doesn't take into account is how much more flexible the new Quicken Mac register is.  In the new Quicken Mac you can move columns around, and such, which can't be done in Quicken Windows.  What's more in the two line mode the second lines of what fields are under what, are not changeable, you can't even control the size individually.

Next one of the main things called out by the original developers that decided to rewrite Quicken Mac is that all the different modes and such in the registers were causing most of the bugs.  By keeping the register as simply (and supported by the native GUI libraries) they have reduced the number of bugs too.

smayer97

You have a good point about that if they are using third-party GUI libraries, this might be a significant obstacle to delivering 2-line registers BUT I want to dispel an incorrect notion and conclusion.

A 2-line register design is NOT what prevents "more flexibility" to move or resize columns. In fact, in QM2007, they started to deliver that very capability (in Brokerage registers, you can actually resize the Transfer and Memo fields on the second line, independent of the first). So it is quite possible to have both a 2-line design and still maintain flexibility.

Bottom line, it is all about design choice and programming capability and effort. If they want to deliver 2-line registers with the same level of flexibility, it can be done. But it is not a forgone conclusion that by having a 2-line design that flexibility is automatically not possible.

jacobs

@smayer97  As I wrote: "That's not to say anything is impossible to program, but it would be time-consuming to implement and might have some performance hits." 

smayer97

@jacobs that is highly presumptuous as to the amount of effort required to implement and impact on performance. (But I was also not addressing your statement anyway... you are not the one that brought up the GUI libraries, are you?).

jacobs

smayer97 said:

@jacobs that is highly presumptuous as to the amount of effort required to implement and impact on performance.

@smayer97 It is not, in fact, highly presumptuous. It's exactly what the longtime product manager for Quicken Mac has stated about why they don't have a 2-line display, and why they were unlikely to devote the resources to create one. 

Chris_QPW

smayer97 said:

A 2-line register design is NOT what prevents "more flexibility" to move or resize columns. In fact, in QM2007, they started to deliver that very capability (in Brokerage registers, you can actually resize the Transfer and Memo fields on the second line, independent of the first). So it is quite possible to have both a 2-line design and still maintain flexibility.

Agreed, but I will tell you something that I have observed over my years as a developer.

It is much better to have a simply program that gets the job done, then to have a complex one that have tons of features and options.

There is a couple of reasons for this.  One is just like building highways.  Everyone seems to want more of them so they don't have to wait.  But this known that each  mile of highway costs about million dollars to maintain.  As you build more highways you have less and less time and money for other things.

As you add more and more features to a program, you have less and less time to maintain them, and keep them working right.  Quicken Windows has a ton of features.  And it also has a ton of features that show a real lack of keeping them up to date.  The whole business section is written in a "web interface" that Microsoft was pushing around the year 2000, but has long since abandoned.  The same is true of the Tax Planner.  To rewrite these is massive, so they don't, they just patch them here and there.  Quicken Windows seems to be a poster child for the "Features sell, fixing bugs, and making the features a 100% functional doesn't." kind of attitude.

Also as you add features you add bugs.  Sorry all programs have bugs, the more features the more bugs.  And the more complex the program the more likely you will have bugs.

The point is that features come at a cost.

Right now I see the Quicken Mac developers doing a very good job of making a solid product with the most needed features.  But over time that will most likely change.  Quicken Mac's "complicated register that causes most of the bugs" didn't happen over night.  It like in all programs happens over time as people move on and don't know it that much or as user ask for features that the "framework" was never designed for, and get tacked on.

Chris_QPW

BTW on comments like this:

Unknown said:

Even with Q17 for Windows I had the option of using a 2 line register. The same with every other version w/Windows but with Windows 17 for Mac.  Why?

All goes back to customer support.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your customer is not to "listen" to them.

In other words, the customer certainly knows what they want, but they don't always understand the "cost".  That is the job of the company to evaluate what is truly the best option.  So that is why submitting suggestions is good, but expecting all of them to be implemented, no matter how popular, isn't.

smayer97

@Chris_QPW I understand the principle you are presenting BUT the same argument can be made about ANY changes... so I think you may be waxing philosophically and therefore a little wide.

There is ALWAYS a cost to everything. At the end of the day, it is ALL about cost/benefit not only to the customer but to the business and the alignment to any business objectives. And only Quicken can see all the cards and make that final determination. All we can do is try to present a case for something (and yes, there is ALWAYS a case against something). The rest is up to them.

So I see little value in bringing up the 'against' case, especially one about cost or trade-off, especially in the context of an idea thread, since Quicken is the only determinant of that.

And there is still a strong case for a 2-line interface, especially when you consider that screen real estate is often at a premium as it seems to trend smaller rather than larger, with phones and tablets over laptops and desktop screens (though this feature has benefits even on a large screen).

woody90069

Yes, please add back in 2 row display. It's a glaring change when migrating from Windows.

jacobs

@woody90069 It's definitely a jarring change for users migrating from Quicken Windows or the legacy Quicken 2007 for Mac. But as I've written above, the fact that it's different and unfamiliar doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing.

I think most of us who have migrated to the modern Quicken Mac from other versions of Quicken have had the immediate early reaction that we miss the two-line register and want it back. Some still feel that way after using it for years, but some -- and I'm in this camp -- have come to prefer the Quicken Mac registers over the old 2-line register. I was jumping between old Quicken Mac 2007 and modern Quicken Mac for a number of years before I finally switched for good, but now when I go back to Quicken 2007, the registers seem dated and more difficult to use than what I've become accustomed to in modern Quicken Mac. It's much easier to skim a column of values on the screen when every line is the same instead of every other line being different. In modern Quicken Mac, the smooth continuous scrolling is so much better than the page-by-page jumping of Quicken 2007, and columns can be shown/hidden however you want, in whatever order you want, at whatever width you want, on a register-by-register basis, to best fit your work. For me and the way I use Quicken, it's a considerable  improvement over the old, static two-line register. But it took me some months of using it to come around to thinking that.

No one really likes change when it comes to using software; it takes unlearning muscle memory. (I still hit Tab an extra time making entries in one of my registers because there's a field that was in Quicken 2007 which I don't have now -- and three decades of using the old interface has me conditioned to that extra Tab! I considered adding an extra field in that spot just so my extra Tab would land me where I used to, but I decided I'm sticking with it and slowly retaining my eye-brain-finger memory not to hit that extra Tab!)

Not everyone agrees on the register look and feel, and that's okay. But when you're new to Quicken Mac, I'd just say to use it for awhile and give it a chance, because you may find you don't dislike the single-line registers as much after some time.

RMWms

I do see the argument for using the MacOS built-in libraries and how that can minimize bugs introduced by additional code. And I'm not totally opposed to single line; they are equally visually functional for me but for one thing: having a font size that works AND having the ability to see the entire entry without having to side-scroll. It comes down to screen real estate when I'm portable. To easily see the entire entry with category and memo enabled on my MacBook screen, it means I often have to scroll. This scrolling makes it a bit harder to scan for something that I don't remember enough about to keyword search. If I collapse all that to two lines, it takes up much less width on a small screen.

I can work with whatever is settled upon, and if 2-line comes back, I really hope we don't see bugs and other code issues come with it. If that's the case, I'm fine with returning to single line. But I wanted to make sure all were aware that those of us who are road warriors really do like the ability to compress widthwise to avoid side-scrolling.

Thanks for QforMac, and thanks for listening!

RMWms

Quicken Premier / Home and Biz user for many years (mostly on Windows)

Chris_QPW

RMWms said:

I can work with whatever is settled upon, and if 2-line comes back, I really hope we don't see bugs and other code issues come with it. If that's the case, I'm fine with returning to single line.

But that's the rub.  Once introduced it is highly unlikely that the customers would allow the Quicken developers to remove it whether it creates bugs or not (major out cry).  Not to mention that as a practice companies really hate to throw out code that they spent a large amount of time developing.  And add to that most likely at first the bugs would be considered "startup bugs that need to be fixed", and not "long term bugs inherent the way it is done", and as such it would be much more imbedded and harder to remove by the time they figured this out.

smayer97

Chris_QPW said:

RMWms said:

I can work with whatever is settled upon, and if 2-line comes back, I really hope we don't see bugs and other code issues come with it. If that's the case, I'm fine with returning to single line.

But that's the rub.  ...

There's no rub.... it would be an option that users can turn on or off... So, if it turns out to be too buggy to a user's liking they can switch back to 1-line display.

jeyges

I've asked for this repeatedly. I can think of nothing that would make Quicken for Mac more user friendly for me than to have two-row register entries, as in Quicken for Windows.

Although I now use Quicken for Mac, the lack of this feature kept me away from it for years. When I first switched from Windows to the Mac, I ran Windows on my MacBook in Parallels Desktop largely so I could continue to use the Windows version of Quicken - and *that* was largely because of the single-line register entry in the Mac Version.

I've made my peace with it, but still, I'd LOVE to have double-line entries in the Mac version. I'm tired of scrolling back and forth to access all of the fields.

noneyerbusiness

I'm still confused as to why the UIs for Mac vs. Windows have to be so divergent; other companies with apps on both platforms have strived to unify UI design (see Microsoft 365 apps). PLEASE oh PLEASE let me see two lines of data per row of transaction in the registers - I use the memo/notes frequently and the layout is much easier to read.

jacobs

This has been asked and talked about since Quicken Mac came out in 2014. (The developers explained back at that time that there were technical issues with building the two-line display in the way Quicken Mac works — although almost nothing is impossible if they devote enough time and effort to programming it.)

One thing I can tell you is that it's easy to add the Memo/Notes column to your registers. (I would be competed lost without this.) Just click on the Columns icon on the bottom menu bar, and check the box for Memo/Notes. Once it's visible in your register, you can also change the order of your columns by clicking and dragging column headings left or right.

Beyond that, the question of what's "easier to read" is pretty subjective. I personally find the Quicken Mac single line display much easier to read than the old two-line display I was so used to for more than two decades. (The old Quicken Mac used a 2-line display like Quicken Windows.) Skimming up and down a screen, or scrolling through multiple screens, it's much easier for the eye to spot data you're looking for if all the columns are aligned, rather than the every-other-line format. But I will say that almost everyone who switches from Quicken Windows or the legacy Quicken Mac has an immediate, knee-jerk negative reaction to the Quicken Mac interface at first. (I did!) All I can suggest is that you don't fight it and work with it for awhile; you may find you're actually fine with the single-line registers after your brain adjusts to it.

That all said, there is an existing Idea thread for this issue; you can add your vote for the two-line display there. (Under the first posts, in the yellow box, click the dark gray arrow under the vote counter; it will change to light gray after your vote has been registered.) (A moderator may merge your thread here with that one. )