Quicken for Mac 2017 v4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2 & 4.5.3 Released

Concordman

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

John I note that prior to launching the update a backup was performed. So you have access to the latest data which you can restore from the backup folder

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

Concordman, you may be right. I went to a Time Machine backup and re-entered the two transactions I had done right before installing the update. 

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

I can confirm that the new version works when the file is on a local disk. Trying to access the data file over afp results in the problems noted above.

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

Above, where I said it asks for the Quicken.com password, I was referring to the Intuit ID password.

Concordman

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

Apologize for my not knowing but what is an AFP server? If its something like dropbox you are going to have issues . Prudent to back up to your local drive. QM does not work well with cloud related backup situations.

If AFP is some sort of cloud based situation than you are very fortunate QM did not crash for you earlier.

Quicken Marcus

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

John, There should be a backup file under the Automatic Backups folder labeled (Pre-Update).  We always make a backup of your file before we do any database migration so you should be able to restore that file and not lose anything.  It sounds like something went wrong during our file migration?  Did you see the database migration screen and did anything happen during that period?  This is the first case I've heard of this happening to a customer so it's not a general 4.5.3 issue.  Something happened during this phase on your particular machine with your particular data.  Were you on Wifi when you did this?  Possibly you lost connection to the AFP server briefly during the migration?

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

AFP is AppleShare. My wife and I have been using it this way for 20 years so we could both access Quicken from our laptops. We verbally confirm only one of us is in the program, to avoid issues. It will be a shame if that ability is now ended.

Concordman

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

Rick, thank you for clarifying this backup issue 

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

Quicken Marcus: When this happened I was accessing the file over ethernet (although we don't always use ethernet). I did see the migration message, and it appeared to complete correctly since the first time (after entering my Intuit ID password) the data file opened fine except it opened a prompt to add a new account. I exited that dialog, quit, and restarted, and after I entered my Intuit ID I got a blank file. 

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

P.S. to Quicken Marcus: when I did the subsequent tests (performing the migration on the host machine so the file was a local copy) I saw the same behavior when I tried to access it remotely: the request for the intuit id password, and the offer to establish an account. Even though my data file was being displayed, somehow quicken seemed to think I had just started a new file.

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

RickO, I understand the rationale not to officially support access off a server due to the possibility of corruption through simultaneous access or network failures. Up until this version, Quicken 2017 has recovered just fine from network failures, as one might expect with a modern database. One would also think a Quicken could set a mutex lock to prevent simultaneous access. 

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

Another problem that can be / was solved with careful setup, i.e. both of us log in using the same user account.

Unknown

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

Anyway, for many many years, Quicken worked fine when accessed with care over AFP. Hopefully, that unofficial / unsupported feature isn't going away today.

mistertheplague

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

How does it work on the Windows side for users to be aware?

It's assumed by seasoned Windows users that each new version of QW is going to have more bugs than an open-air picnic. Therefore, users often hold off on upgrading for two or three releases (or more, depending on the carnage being reported on the forum).

This came up in the data-lockout thread as one of the most stringent objections to being forced to upgrade every year starting with R1 -- a prospect that rightly horrifies any Windows user with more than one release under his/her belt. 

mistertheplague

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

How does it work on the Windows side for users to be aware?

It's assumed by seasoned Windows users that each new version of QW is going to have more bugs than an open-air picnic. Therefore, users often hold off on upgrading for two or three releases (or more, depending on the carnage being reported on the forum).

This came up in the data-lockout thread as one of the most stringent objections to being forced to upgrade every year starting with R1 -- a prospect that rightly horrifies any Windows user with more than one release under his/her belt. 

mistertheplague

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

Edit: should read "with one or more version under his/her belt."

Unknown

I am using 4.5.3 and notice a couple of quirks.  

1. Difficulty typing in sub level categories for additional payment items.  When I create the mortgage payment, I specify the individual items pro-rated on a per month basis versus an escrow transfer - i.e. I specify property taxes and home insurance as two additional payment items.  When trying to specify a category that is a subcategory (e.g. Tax:Property), it will not allow me to type it in - I must select it before I type the colon.  I have a 3 level Tax structure.  Tax:HTax:Federal etc, Tax:JTax:Federal etc, then Tax:Property to separate my wife's and my taxes but roll up to Tax.  Property is a shared tax so it is separate.  When I get to the colon, it switches to the second level category in alphabetical order which is HTax, but then any further typing is based off of that second level category only - i.e. it locks me into the HTax subcategory instead of allowing me to specify Property as the second level category.

2. Auto Loan additional item with Loan interest is ignored.  I created an auto loan that when the payment is calculated it was slightly off (because of an extended period of time before the first payment - less than a dollar.  When I tried to add an additional loan item and associate it with the "Loan Interest" category just to reconcile the difference, it was completely ignored in the total - even if I changed the category to something else on the same entry.  Only if I created the additional line using another category did it stick (and changing it to loan interest would make it be ignored again).

mistertheplague

Just downloaded 4.5.3. Question: can I make a copy of my QM17 file? In QW you can copy your .QDF and mess around with the copy. That way if you do something untoward, your original remains unborked

Unknown

mistertheplague said:

Just downloaded 4.5.3. Question: can I make a copy of my QM17 file? In QW you can copy your .QDF and mess around with the copy. That way if you do something untoward, your original remains unborked

On a Mac, selecting a file, then pressing the OPTION key and dragging the file to another location will make a copy of that file...and leave the original intact and in it's original location.  

mistertheplague

mistertheplague said:

Just downloaded 4.5.3. Question: can I make a copy of my QM17 file? In QW you can copy your .QDF and mess around with the copy. That way if you do something untoward, your original remains unborked

Worked. Thx gmalis1

smayer97

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

sounds no different than the Mac, other than you are used to the process.

@Quicken Marcus is this simply not semantics? I truly understand the caution. It makes sense but does the fact that you are testing the waters with batched releases suggestive of a trialed testing in the wild with a few thousand, instead of the smaller sample in the official beta cycle? That is typically still considered beta in many circles.

smayer97

mistertheplague said:

Just downloaded 4.5.3. Question: can I make a copy of my QM17 file? In QW you can copy your .QDF and mess around with the copy. That way if you do something untoward, your original remains unborked

Or select File > Duplicate (or CMD-D) to make an in place copy.

mistertheplague

mistertheplague said:

Just downloaded 4.5.3. Question: can I make a copy of my QM17 file? In QW you can copy your .QDF and mess around with the copy. That way if you do something untoward, your original remains unborked

Not seeing that cmd in the QM17 menu, smayer97. Assume that's in Mac Finder menu?

mistertheplague

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

sounds no different than the Mac, other than you are used to the process.

Perhaps. I've been a QW user for years; I only started using QM last fall. I purchased QM17 immediately after release and had no problems with it -- which is to say that the things about QM17 that didn't (and still don't) work weren't supposed to work.

Assuming that things in QW that haven't worked were supposed to work, on the other hand, would probably strike long-time Windows users as a little naive.

Some years it's almost like the QW team got to the end of a dev cycle, had a release deadline and said screw it as they shipped a time bomb, knowing it was going to detonate at some point.

Q15 and the mobile fiasco was the worst I can recall. The forum and support lines were was crammed with livid and panic-stricken users whose data files had become hopelessly corrupted, or in a few cases seemed to just evaporate.

Has that been going on over on the Mac side? I don't recall noticing it. 

mistertheplague

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

sounds no different than the Mac, other than you are used to the process.

Perhaps. I've been a QW user for years; I only started using QM last fall. I purchased QM17 immediately after release and had no problems with it -- which is to say that the things about QM17 that didn't (and still don't) work weren't supposed to work.

Assuming that things in QW that haven't worked were supposed to work, on the other hand, would probably strike long-time Windows users as a little naive.

Some years it's almost like the QW team got to the end of a dev cycle, had a release deadline and said screw it as they shipped a time bomb, knowing it was going to detonate at some point.

Q15 and the mobile fiasco was the worst I can recall. The forum and support lines were was crammed with livid and panic-stricken users whose data files had become hopelessly corrupted, or in a few cases seemed to just evaporate.

Has that been going on over on the Mac side? I don't recall noticing it. 

brucel

John Pane said:

Previously, when I launched Quicken it would re-open the previously opened file. Now it doesn't and when I select a file to open it asks not only for the file password but also the Quicken.com password. 

@JohnPane - Apple has been slowly moving away from AFP to SMB with SMB being the default protocol since El Capitan so you may consider migrating to SMB if your server/NAS supports it.  That said, I doubt that AFP vs. SMB is the root cause for your problem though.

mistertheplague

As Snoopy FC reported upthread, the loan wizard appears to ignore the user-entered starting date in favor of the current date:





However, right-clicking the first scheduled transaction in Bill Reminders, selecting Edit Schedule, and changing the start date appears to correct this bug.

Quicken Marcus

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

smayer97, this is not just semantics.  When we release to customers, we believe everything is working as designed and that people won't run into issues.  We release in waves, like every other software company, because it's prudent to do so.  We don't consider this testing but are realistic that when something goes out to millions of people who each have different ways of working with the product that some issue might be found.  And because we release in waves, it means we don't impact the entire user base if an issue is found.  The bottom line, in hindsight, is we didn't do a good enough job of catching these issues before release.  I don't disagree with that sentiment.   My point is that it is absolutely NOT part of our process to ship buggy software with the expectation that early customers will find issues.  Clearly, it may feel that way with this release but I want everyone to understand that this is NOT what we intended or expected.

Quicken Marcus

Matt said:

As a consultant who helps clients on macOS, the way you have handled the 4.5 rollout has been frustrating. I have clients who have several machines within a single office, some of whom have received the update, some of whom have not. These are really beta releases. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 are really bug fixes for a 4.5 beta, not actual updates. You might want to consider giving people an option in Preferences to get beta updates, rather than releasing beta software to a small and unsuspecting number of clients. 

smayer97, this is not just semantics.  When we release to customers, we believe everything is working as designed and that people won't run into issues.  We release in waves, like every other software company, because it's prudent to do so.  We don't consider this testing but are realistic that when something goes out to millions of people who each have different ways of working with the product that some issue might be found.  And because we release in waves, it means we don't impact the entire user base if an issue is found.  The bottom line, in hindsight, is we didn't do a good enough job of catching these issues before release.  I don't disagree with that sentiment.   My point is that it is absolutely NOT part of our process to ship buggy software with the expectation that early customers will find issues.  Clearly, it may feel that way with this release but I want everyone to understand that this is NOT what we intended or expected.

Quicken Marcus

zwzlife said:

Where is new Loan feature? Our mortgage has been paid off, but we do have a Line of Credit.

Are you talking about a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC).  This is typically considered a credit card from a Quicken perspective since it typically acts like one.  If you want to add a Loan you would add an account and pick a loan type.  This will only appear in 4.5.x releases which we haven't fully released to everyone yet.