Quicken for Mac 2018 v5.5.4 and Other 5.5.x Releases

Craig in ER

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Marcus,  Thanks to you and the Quicken team for the continuous improvement of Quicken.  The slow load of Quicken 2018 is a real problem.  I experience it almost daily.  I believe it is the loading of the application and not the data file that is slow.  The slow launch/load of Quicken occurs almost daily for me and is reproducible.  Here is the scenario I experience.  I shut down my computer nightly.  In the morning I boot up my computer (iMac) and let it fully boot up.  I then click the Quicken icon to launch Quicken.  It takes several minutes for Quicken to load.  I timed it and for me it takes generally 3 minutes to load.  The load time is long enough that I can go on to other tasks while waiting for Quicken to open.  After Quicken opens the data file then launches.  I think Quicken is loading something in the background or is having some other issues with the Mac OS.  But, here is the catch.  If I quit Quicken and then at any other time during the day (without shutting down my computer) relaunch Quicken it takes mere seconds for it to launch - I would say less than 10 seconds.  Which is what I would expect all the time and is consistent with other application launch times.  Why even MS Word launches faster than Quicken.  However, if I completely shut down my computer, then restart it and again launch/load Quicken it again takes several minutes to load.  This is very annoying and in my opinion not correct.  Others have reported the same experience in several other conversations.  This problem occurred with Quicken 2017 as well and I hoped Quicken 2018 would fix it - but it did not.  I have tried all of the setting adjustments suggested by you and others with no affect.  This slow load problem is, in my opinion, serious and needs further consideration.

Quicken Marcus

John Morrow said:

Here is another bug:

1. %I to open the Transaction Info window
2. move to the category field
3. start typing
4. the Category selection popup opens BEHIND the Transaction window

I'm guessing there is a real bug here and it wasn't really fixed in 5.5.5.  I can't think of any changes we made in 5.5.5 that would have improved category drop down behavior.

Quicken Marcus

John Morrow said:

Reports, the Transfer column sometimes shows "1 transfer" instead of the Account name :



This happens for split Transactions. I don't think it should, because the report shows only one of the split lines (the one with the transfer), not the transaction that the split line is part of.

Here is the corresponding split transaction:

I'm guessing we're just displaying what is displayed in the top-level transaction.  Would you expect the top level transaction to be blank?

Quicken Marcus

John Morrow said:

Report > Export > Copy to clipboard, cents are cutoff when pasting in Excel and currency is Euro.

Excerpt from the report:


Excerpt from Excel for the same transactions (after copy & paste):

I'm not able to reproduce this.  I set up an account with Euros and went to a transaction report and copy and pasted into Excel and it appears to work for me.  I'm not seeing any currency symbols exported in either the copy or the export to CSV which I think is making this work for me.  I see the currency symbol in the report but not in the exported content.  My MacOS is set to US.  Is your MacOS set to a French or European locale?  I wonder if it has something to do with the comma being used as a number separator.  I tried using French and it looks like Excel is tuns the numbers into strings in this situation but I was able to see what you're seeing.  Any other details of how you were able to reproduce this issue?

Quicken Marcus

wiedemag said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Lost Tab Ability in QM 18 5.5.5 Upgrade Which Worked in 5.5.4?.


Running QM 2018 5.5.5 on 17" MacBook Pro with 10.13.3.

Long time Quicken user since 1988 and have been reluctant to leave QM 2007 for reasons well explained in other posts (primarily dealing with report deficiencies)...until 2 weeks ago...when I could no longer nurse along my corrupted QM 2007 file. It kept crashing and I would loose hours of work when the file could not be re-opened...nor would the frequent 5 or 6 duplicates AND "save a copy" files (if that process could complete without crashing!!) open.

After having been "forced" to migrate to QM18 to preserve my sanity, I have been very pleasantly surprised to have discovered many benefits NOT available in 2007.

One benefit has been the Tab ability (explained recently in a prior post by others) which I used often in 5.5.4 to allow rapid but still neat accessibility to other accounts while maintaining the Home window unchanged .

Unfortunately, I am unable to find that capability again since upgrading to 5.5.5.

I would ask that any 5.5.5 users try to activate that ability and see if it works for them with this new version and report back...perhaps I am just using wobbly thought about how I used to access that ability??

It looks like my comment was lost on this post.  We did turn this off in 5.5.5 because we thought it was causing our number one crash.  I'm not positive it fixed that issue but people were seeing random crashes and this looked like a possible reason.

Quicken Marcus

rrtorrenti said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Updated 5.5.5 Q2018 for Mac. What happened to my TABS? Click on "Show All Tabs" ....


What happened to my TABS? Click on "Show All Tabs" and Quicken minimizes!  Seriously?

We've been trying to fix our number one crashing issue for the past 5 months with no concrete clues about what is causing it except that it appeared to be happening when people had tabs.  The exact crash has gone away so blocking tabs have helped but we can still see that a similar crash continues to occur.   This probably means that tabs weren't the core issue but exacerbated the issue.  I'll chat with my engineers to see what we can do.  I realize there's value in having the tabs. 

Quicken Marcus

rrtorrenti said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Updated 5.5.5 Q2018 for Mac. What happened to my TABS? Click on "Show All Tabs" ....


What happened to my TABS? Click on "Show All Tabs" and Quicken minimizes!  Seriously?

We've been trying to fix our number one crashing issue for the past 5 months with no concrete clues about what is causing it except that it appeared to be happening when people had tabs.  The exact crash has gone away so blocking tabs have helped but we can still see that a similar crash continues to occur.   This probably means that tabs weren't the core issue but exacerbated the issue.  I'll chat with my engineers to see what we can do.  I realize there's value in having the tabs. 

Quicken Marcus

John Morrow said:

Reports > New Report, a search bar to filter transactions would be most useful.

Interesting idea.  That would be very useful.

smayer97

John Morrow said:

Reports/New Report, I have been struggling to find the correct report template for my needs and have come to the conclusion that it would be neat to have a sort of mini-PivotTable definition widget for reports.

This would allow to generalize the current Create a Transaction Report window and allow to mix and match fields of different types and reorganize them at will. And avoid launching Excel every now and then... 

You can actually see the specific List of Requests for Report Related Features.

(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

Quicken Marcus

John Morrow said:

Reports > New Report > Customize > Categories, then:

1. Select: None
2. Then, progressively select all top level categories, starting from the top and progressing towards the bottom
3. Each time, selecting a top-level category will automatically select ALL of its children
4. EXCEPT that, at some point, ONLY SOME children will be selected
5. WORSE, some categories somewhere up or down the list will be SELECTED/UNSELECTED as a side effect
6. It looks like QM goes out of sync between the list on screen and list in memory

Example, clicking once on Vacation:


Clicking again on Vacation:


Clicking a third time on Vacation:


(For some reason, QM doesn't like me spending money on vacations. It must prefer that I spend additional money on QM itself.)

I can't reproduce either of these issues.  I'm guessing I'm not replicating the exact circumstances that you both have.  I'll reach out to see if possibly we can get a file that can reproduce this issue.

Quicken Marcus

jacobs said:

@SnoopyFC's screen shots remind me of another thing I wish the developers would clean up with the investment graphs: choosing better values for the Y axis. Quicken appears to basically be taking the difference of  the maximum and minimum, and dividing by 10 for the values on the Y axis. But who wants a chart with values like 82,000, 123,000, 164,000? You'd prefer to see 75,000, 125,000, 175,000, or perhaps 50,000, 100,000 and 150,000.

To be fair, it's far better in Quicken 2018 than Quicken 2017 and earlier, where you'd see Y axis values like 104.95k, 108.84k, 112.73k. But it would be great to go a step further and have the software understand that humans are going to want grid line units in multiples of round numbers (like 5, 10, 25, 100 of hundreds or thousands or or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands).

Yah, that makes a lot of sense.  Thanks for the suggestion.

Quicken Marcus

Snoopy FC said:

Under the Investing:Retirement (or education or brokerage) headings on the left sidebar, I've noticed that the graphs for these aggregated selections only show true historical graphs if all the subordinate accounts are shown (unhidden) in the sidebar at left.  Any subordinate accounts that are hidden are not reflected in the aggregate graph.  Notice the screenshot here with all subordinate accounts unhidden: 

Now, notice the screenshot with a single subordinate account hidden:

If you're not aware of this issue in reviewing your account history, the graphical presentation can be misleading.  Is there a way to allow hiding of the closed accounts and still allowing their data to be incorporated into these graphs?  If not can it be added?  

Seems like this is an option that could be added to the account selection screen here as a column: 
to the right of reports.....

Thanks Snoopy and s2kdriver.  Great discussion.  At a high-level, what I'm hearing is that you would like to be able to include hidden accounts when looking at historical data or charts (probably net worth as well) and you'd like a way of doing that.  Makes a lot of sense to me.

smayer97

Mike OMalley said:

There is a bug in the Mac Quicken Deluxe 2018.  Heres how to replicate;
Enter a transaction and make it an account to account transfer as the category.  
Leave the program, and relaunch.  
Use the same Payee so that it comes up as a remembered transaction, with the transfer as the category.  Now go and change the category to an actual category, and hit enter.
The transaction will be recorded twice, once in that register as a category transaction, and it will also appear in the to: transfer account as a transaction.

Not sure why making each side more independent would cause the loss of this functionality but I agree with s2kdriver and RickO...it would be a shame to lose the ability to categorize transfers.

Quicken Marcus

jimkk89 said:

Since the latest updates every time I use Quicken for Mac 2018 I need to re-enter my password to backup my account to the cloud account. Is there a new work around?  This has not been a problem with the mobile version although it prompts me about once a month. Is that supposed to happen?

This is not expected behavior.   Unfortunately, I'm not able to reproduce it.  It seems like you must be in a weird state where Quicken isn't able to save the token.  The token is what we save locally after you log in successfully that says you are a valid user.  If we can't save this, then it continues to ask you to sign in.  I don't think we changed anything around logging in with the 5.5.5 release that would impact this but clearly something changed.  Did you change anything on your end like move the file or change the Quicken ID, etc.

smayer97

John Morrow said:

Reports > New Report, a search bar to filter transactions would be most useful.

Do you mean filter report names to find reports or do you mean filter transactions on reports?

Unknown

jimkk89 said:

Since the latest updates every time I use Quicken for Mac 2018 I need to re-enter my password to backup my account to the cloud account. Is there a new work around?  This has not been a problem with the mobile version although it prompts me about once a month. Is that supposed to happen?

I dont recall changing anything, but find it annoying that I need to do it everytime I update my accounts on the laptop and sync to the cloud.

jacobs

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Craig, hopefully Marcus will read and respond.

Meanwhile, I have two guesses about what might be causing the results you describe. First, it may be that it *is* your data file, not the program. This should be easy to test. From the File menu, select New and create a new data file. Enter a couple manual transactions. Now quit Quicken, shut down your computer, restart it, and then launch Quicken. Does it take the same 3 minutes to start up, or is it faster?

Here's the other possible factor: does your Mac have a fusion hard drive? If so, that might explain the difference in launch times. On restart of the computer, parts of the operating system are moved onto the solid state portion of your hard drive, and when you launch Quicken, the app and data file are being read from the much slower spinning drive. But as they are read off the hard drive, they are also stored on the fast solid state portion of the drive. If you quit Quicken and restart it without launching a lot of the programs in the interim, the program and data file will still be on the solid state portion of the drive and be read much more quickly. If you quit Quicken, then launch and use a bunch of other programs, then re-launch Quicken, is it now the slow launch time?

jlgg

jimkk89 said:

Since the latest updates every time I use Quicken for Mac 2018 I need to re-enter my password to backup my account to the cloud account. Is there a new work around?  This has not been a problem with the mobile version although it prompts me about once a month. Is that supposed to happen?

This is happening to me as well after update to 5.5.5.  I called Quicken support, and they had me delete the Quicken keychain entry. Unfortunately, this did not help. It is annoying to have to log-in each time I download transactions.

Concordman

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Jacob, I tend to agree with you I purchased my iMAC 27 in 2016, 1TB Fusion Drive. This was my initial venture into the world of MAC computers the guy at the Apple store thought the 1TB fusion would be fine for my needs. Indeed it has been fine but I have observed the same slow start up  issue on QM16, 17. & 18 when the computer is shut down, which I do every every week. All apps spin up pretty quickly except QM. I have not put a stop watch to it it but it could be somewhere between 1-2 mins. If I close the program without shutting down  Qm spins up very quickly.

Concordman

Snoopy FC said:

Under the Investing:Retirement (or education or brokerage) headings on the left sidebar, I've noticed that the graphs for these aggregated selections only show true historical graphs if all the subordinate accounts are shown (unhidden) in the sidebar at left.  Any subordinate accounts that are hidden are not reflected in the aggregate graph.  Notice the screenshot here with all subordinate accounts unhidden: 

Now, notice the screenshot with a single subordinate account hidden:

If you're not aware of this issue in reviewing your account history, the graphical presentation can be misleading.  Is there a way to allow hiding of the closed accounts and still allowing their data to be incorporated into these graphs?  If not can it be added?  

Seems like this is an option that could be added to the account selection screen here as a column: 
to the right of reports.....

@marcus I actually keep a few closed credit card accounts active cause the history which is just a few years old may be important when running reports. If you can determine how to have access to the data w/o keeping the account active ..that would be very nice. 

Since we are talking about hiding accounts has there been any further effort to hide securities what are no longer active? I see that Quicken cant delete securities cause it thinks they are active but hiding them would be a neat idea.

Concordman

jimkk89 said:

Since the latest updates every time I use Quicken for Mac 2018 I need to re-enter my password to backup my account to the cloud account. Is there a new work around?  This has not been a problem with the mobile version although it prompts me about once a month. Is that supposed to happen?

I do not observe this on every transaction download but ever so often I will get a request prior to downloading to enter QuickenID & PW. Is this common or expected behaviour?

smayer97

jimkk89 said:

Since the latest updates every time I use Quicken for Mac 2018 I need to re-enter my password to backup my account to the cloud account. Is there a new work around?  This has not been a problem with the mobile version although it prompts me about once a month. Is that supposed to happen?

The Quicken ID token needs to be refreshed for some of the following reasons: if you are logging in from a new location, new computer, new data file, or at least every 90 days (it it expires). It only attempts to refresh if there is an expected internet connect. If none is found within 180 seconds, the token refresh is abandoned. 

I would like to at least see that this token refresh be changed so it does not automatically expire after 90 days but rather expires only 90 days since that last use of the Quicken ID. 

(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

Concordman

jimkk89 said:

Since the latest updates every time I use Quicken for Mac 2018 I need to re-enter my password to backup my account to the cloud account. Is there a new work around?  This has not been a problem with the mobile version although it prompts me about once a month. Is that supposed to happen?

I see your meaning but its not that big of a deal . I am good with the way it is now (90days) or what you are proposing

smayer97

Snoopy FC said:

Under the Investing:Retirement (or education or brokerage) headings on the left sidebar, I've noticed that the graphs for these aggregated selections only show true historical graphs if all the subordinate accounts are shown (unhidden) in the sidebar at left.  Any subordinate accounts that are hidden are not reflected in the aggregate graph.  Notice the screenshot here with all subordinate accounts unhidden: 

Now, notice the screenshot with a single subordinate account hidden:

If you're not aware of this issue in reviewing your account history, the graphical presentation can be misleading.  Is there a way to allow hiding of the closed accounts and still allowing their data to be incorporated into these graphs?  If not can it be added?  

Seems like this is an option that could be added to the account selection screen here as a column: 
to the right of reports.....

You can add your VOTE to Add ability to hide currently unused securities.

First, click on the underlined link above to go there, then click VOTE at the top of THAT page, so your will vote count for THIS feature and increase its visibility to the developers by seeking to have the features you need or desire end up in the latest version.

While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the List of Requests Related to Investments. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. Your VOTES matter!

(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

jacobs

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Quicken has to read a LOT of data as part of its start-up process. I don't know the internal workings, but it may actually read every record in order to calculate things like running balances which aren't stored and are calculated on the fly each time the program is launched. There is likely a HUGE difference in startup time between reading a data file that is on the solid state memory part of a fusion drive and a data file which is on the rather sluggish 5400 RPM spinning drive that comprises the main storage area. It could easily be a 10-fold or more difference in speed.

smayer97

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Sorry but that explanation does not quite wash...users moving from QM2007 to QM2018 experience this slow start-up with about the same amount of data. The issue is far more than just reading data from the file on a hard drive.

jacobs

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

@smayer97, Quicken 2007 does not read in the whole data file (or some significant part of it) like Quicken 2015-2018 does. Very, very different program and data file architectures. So, yes, this explanation could make sense. That said, it may have only a little to do with the times people are seeing. I can't say with certainty because I don't have a fusion drive on either of my home Macs to test this on. (But I know when I've temporarily installed Quicken on a work computer with a fusion drive, the startup time difference was striking.)

Nonetheless, on my home iMac, a Late 2012 model with a stock Apple 5400 RPM spinning (not fusion) drive, Quicken 2018 takes 45 seconds from start of launch until a window opens -- the first time. If I quit and re-launch Quicken, even with some other activity in between, it opens in 15 seconds. I thought it could have to do with Quicken downloading fresh copies of the fidir.txt and fiblueprint.xml data files on first launch. But combined these are just over 6 MB, which shouldn't take long to download, and a quick test confirmed that removing these files resulted in them being regenerated on next launch, but the next launch was still 15 seconds rather than 45. (Results are nearly identical using the same data file and Quicken 2017.) So there's clearly something Quicken is needing to do the first time it's launched that is taking a lot of extra time, and although I have a few other speculative thoughts, I'll just revert to the first thing I said above: "Hopefully Marcus will read and respond."

smayer97

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Thanks for the analysis. Not sure where you are getting the idea but if indeed QM2015-18 are reading the entire data file on start-up, this should not be so. No database should need to be read in its entirety to start-up. But as as been noted, there clearly is a significant difference in startup times vs QM2007.

These two statements clearly point to the fact that the issue is not about the amount of data involved but the way the data is handled, or other activity unrelated activity on start-up (I suspect more the latter).

But like you said, "Hopefully Marcus will read and respond."  :-)

Craig in ER

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Thanks for the comments.  I do have a Fusion drive but i don't think that is the issue although I am not smart enough to prove either way.  The Fusion drive is supposed to smartly move the files you most often to the Flash portion of the drive and keep them there ready for use.  Other than Mail and Safari I don't use any other application more than Quicken which I use every day.  Furthermore no other application takes as long to launch as Quicken does.  And this slow launch of Quicken is the first launch after a computer start up.
I have 3 Quicken data files.  One file has only two checkbook accounts, no investment tracking, no loans, etc.  This file has 129 transaction items in it and the file size is 3 MB.  If I launch that file as the first file to open after starting my Mac for the day it still takes 2-3 minutes for Quicken to launch.  If I then quit Quicken and relaunch that same file again Quicken launches and the file opens in less than 5 seconds.  For the rest of the day any time I launch Quicken or a Quicken file it will happen within mere seconds - even for my largest data file.  If, however, i shut down my Mac and reboot it then the initial slow load of Quicken starts all over again.  Very annoying.  This does not happen with any other application.  And, Q2007 still launches in mere seconds (always did).  I don't use Q2007 - just keep it around for old times sake.
It could be the Fusion drive but this slow load behavior of Quicken 2017-2018 is so unique I kind of doubt it.  I sure hope Quicken team can find an answer.  Even it is something unique to my Mac having an answer is better than having to get upset every time I launch Quicken.
One other note Quicken's competing financial management applications launch in just seconds - no long delayed launch.

Craig in ER

Jim said:

Is anything being done to speed up the slow loading issue?

Thanks for the ideas.  I have tried all of your suggestions with no difference to the load speed.  FYI when I launch Quicken after restarting my computer the Quicken menu bar appears almost instantly then Quicken stalls - nothing appears to be happening.  If I right click the Quicken icon in the dock during the wait the menu says Quicken Not Responding and Force Quit is available. After the typical 2-3 minute wait my data file finally launches.  If I quit Quicken and then relaunch everything opens within 5 seconds.  I can repeat the problem by simply shutting down my computer, restarting and then launching Quicken.
I don't know if my problem could be with the application install, or my data file, or both.  I don't know if any of the Quicken log files show anything unusual or even what to look for.  Can I reinstall Quicken 5.5.5?