Quicken for Mac 2018 v5.6.x Released

Doyle Slack

Who thinks that starting the investment chart ALWAYS at zero is a good idea???

I am trying to track the change in my portfolio over a time period - the old way let me see the delta very easily.   Now all I see is a nearly straight line.  This chart is now useless.

Please - either change it back or give me the option to choose.  

Najmi

s2kdriver said:

Very nice printing improvements for the Portfolio view - thank you.  I particularly like the CSV export capability to format the report in Excel according to personal needs.  This is a good addition.

However, I am disappointed that two major issues still remain in the investments area:

1. Remove shares is still treated as a capital loss, and this negatively affects the Performance measurements (IRR, ROI) and the capital gains report.  From my perspective this is a major defect since Remove shares and Add shares is Quicken's recommended method to move shares between accounts, and is also the mechanism to handle security exchanges within an account.  This defect can turn a positively performing security and account into a loss position, and as a result the performance measurements for the account can go permanently negative because of this.  It makes IRR & ROI measurements permanently useless for that security and account, as well as impacting performance roll-ups at the Brokerage, Retirement, and Education investment category levels.

2. Adjusted Cost Base (or average cost) has not been added as a cost basis method for securities.  FIFO and LIFO are not valid cost basis methods for Canadian taxpayers. Other Canadian features in the product have been very good so far, but this remaining issue is a real limiter.  Unless you take extreme measures to manually calculate and implement an ACB method using the custom lots feature, the product does not report correct gain/loss amounts.  Canadian users typically have to calculate their cost base using other methods outside of the product (e.g. Excel).  This is a shame and removes value from the product for Canadian users.  I don't think I am alone in this request.

Perhaps there was insufficient time to deal with these issues in the 5.6 release.  I am still hopeful that Quicken will address these problems within a reasonable time as part of upcoming releases.

No, I don't believe is it possible to move investment transactions from one account to another, like you can do with cash/credit transactions. 

Yes,  401K to IRA is definitely one situation when you need it.  Converting from IRA to Roth IRA is another or just consolidating accounts or changing brokerages. While Remove is in theory easy - there is the issue discussed above on how to treat the transaction for performance computations. And the ADD workaround can be hard/impossible, if these have been held for many years and there are a large number of dividends/capital gains distributions reinvested or otherwise. To get an accurate IRR this needs to be preserved. So while adding the cost basis and date acquired can be a reasonable work-around in some situations, it may not work in others.  

I know this is on the to-do list, I simply wanted to clarify the difficulty of the work-around so that it can be retained as a possible high-priority feature for future enhancements. 

smayer97

Doyle Slack said:

Who thinks that starting the investment chart ALWAYS at zero is a good idea???

I am trying to track the change in my portfolio over a time period - the old way let me see the delta very easily.   Now all I see is a nearly straight line.  This chart is now useless.

Please - either change it back or give me the option to choose.  

As pointed out several times in this thread already, Marcus has already indicated that this is being restored in the next update.

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

jacobs

Marcus, as you continue to make enhancements to the reports selection UI, I want note one thing about the current UI that doesn't make sense. I select New Report, choose one of the three types (such as Transaction), choose a subtotal (such as Category), and then.... click Create Report. I then wait while Quicken creates a report which, I'd guess, is NOT what the user wants 90+% of the time; almost always, a trip to Customize is needed to select a desired date range and other filters. Instead of first creating the report and then having the user refine it and regenerate it, why not have the UI take the user directly to the Customize screen before generating the report? For a user who wants to change nothing, this adds a mere on additional click on the OK button; for users who want to set a date range and/or other filters, it's a faster path to getting the report they want. (And this change would be easy to program, as it's not changing any of the existing functionality.)

jacobs

Marcus, another Reports UI comment: when I create a New Report, the first thing it asks me to do is name the report. That has always seemed odd to me, as I often generate Quicken reports on the fly and don't want to save or name them. If I don't type a name, Quicken names it for me: "Category Transaction 4" or similar, which is okay. But here's the real problem: the Customize dialog box has a checkbox for "Save as Custom Report" -- but every report a user generates is being saved from the instant it's created. My Reports menu is littered with quick one-time reports I don't need again, but haven't taken time to go back and delete. Why save every report, when there's already an option to Save as Custom Report for those reports a user wants to save? Why not allow reports created on the fly to be unnamed and unsaved, and require entry of a name only if and when a user wants to save the report?

s2kdriver

RickO said:

The report customization dialog has been simplified to have 2 basic settings: 1) Include any account, category, tag, or payee or 2) Include only selected accounts, categories, tags or payees. Previously it was not obvious what would happen if all accounts, categories, tags, or payees were selected.

This is a vast improvement. However, we still need in the Tags section a *No Tag* item in the list. As it is, there is no way to filter for transactions that have either one specific tag OR are untagged.Marcus - thanks for acknowledging the need for an exclusion use case for tags.  Personally, I tag only specific transaction types with most of my transactions being untagged.  This leaves me with a mix of untagged and tagged transactions.  If I want to include untagged and most of the tagged transactions in a report (i.e. leave out one or more tags), I cannot accomplish this today in QM. Both older versions of Quicken and QWin handle this case by adding a <no-tags> or <untagged> element to the selection list.  It seems you are half way there by solving the category side (i.e. by including <uncategorized> in the category list).  It would be great if you could just complete the work for tags filtering using a similar approach.

Richard Haas

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled 5.6 update cost basis.


After update of 5.6 Mac, Cost basis in some of my Mutual funds says "ADD" but the shares are correct and when I try to guessimate nothing changes.  It still says "ADD".

Mike Lane

Richard Haas said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled 5.6 update cost basis.


After update of 5.6 Mac, Cost basis in some of my Mutual funds says "ADD" but the shares are correct and when I try to guessimate nothing changes.  It still says "ADD".

Richard, you probably have a placeholder entry at the beginning of your transaction register.  This is automatically created to make the share count equal the download count, however the placeholder does not have a cost.  Therefore it is asking for an add.  Look for the placeholder all the way at the beginning and replace it with a new entry for same number of shares and appropriate cost. 

Unknown

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Still backing up after 5.6 update?.


After the 5.6 update I no longer see the quick flash for the backup file when I quit. Has something changed? Is it so quick now I'm missing it, or has it stopped backing up?

Thanks very much.

Unknown

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Reduced file size of Quicken for Mac Premier 2018 Version 5.6.0 (Build 56.22351.1....


I updated to 5.6.0 yesterday and noticed that the size of my Quicken data file went down from about 162 MB to about 123 MB.  Why is the 5.6 file so much smaller?

Najmi

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled File size change after 5.6.


I did see my file size change also - from ~200MB to ~160MB.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Reduced file size of Quicken for Mac Premier 2018 Version 5.6.0 (Build 56.22351.1....

s2kdriver

s2kdriver said:

Very nice printing improvements for the Portfolio view - thank you.  I particularly like the CSV export capability to format the report in Excel according to personal needs.  This is a good addition.

However, I am disappointed that two major issues still remain in the investments area:

1. Remove shares is still treated as a capital loss, and this negatively affects the Performance measurements (IRR, ROI) and the capital gains report.  From my perspective this is a major defect since Remove shares and Add shares is Quicken's recommended method to move shares between accounts, and is also the mechanism to handle security exchanges within an account.  This defect can turn a positively performing security and account into a loss position, and as a result the performance measurements for the account can go permanently negative because of this.  It makes IRR & ROI measurements permanently useless for that security and account, as well as impacting performance roll-ups at the Brokerage, Retirement, and Education investment category levels.

2. Adjusted Cost Base (or average cost) has not been added as a cost basis method for securities.  FIFO and LIFO are not valid cost basis methods for Canadian taxpayers. Other Canadian features in the product have been very good so far, but this remaining issue is a real limiter.  Unless you take extreme measures to manually calculate and implement an ACB method using the custom lots feature, the product does not report correct gain/loss amounts.  Canadian users typically have to calculate their cost base using other methods outside of the product (e.g. Excel).  This is a shame and removes value from the product for Canadian users.  I don't think I am alone in this request.

Perhaps there was insufficient time to deal with these issues in the 5.6 release.  I am still hopeful that Quicken will address these problems within a reasonable time as part of upcoming releases.

Marcus - thanks for responding on these two issues (remove/add shares and ACB).  Quicken's engagement on these forums is what makes your customers both passionate and loyal.  It is a real differentiator vs. other products.  Please keep it up.

Regarding the Remove/Add shares problem, I see three issues with potential solutions for each:

1. A Remove Shares transaction today appears to be treated internally as a zero-dollar sale, likely to avoid the issue of dealing with cash balance changes.  This is incorrect as it generates a false capital loss with downstream consequences (wrong gain/loss reporting and incorrect IRR/ROI).  An alternative would be to treat remove shares internally as a two-part action: a) neutral sale(s) at the original cost bases of the security lots (i.e. so no artificial gain/loss is generated), and b) automatic removal of the cash associated with each of those synthetic lot sales.  This would give the correct underlying behaviour which you could eventually link with Add Shares transactions if you undertake Transfer Shares work in the future.  Note that Add Shares already has the infrastructure to properly set the date added to the account, the date originally acquired, and the original cost basis (by using one Add Shares transaction per transferred lot).

2. The second problem is how to handle IRR/ROI for the shares themselves (not the accounts). Ideally, the IRR/ROI for the shares should follow the shares, and take into account the full performance history for the lots retained and/or removed/added.  While this sounds complicated, the solution may be simple if we follow the approach detailed in part 1 above.  At a per-security level (not account), the IRR/ROI measure should consider only the share lots remaining in the account following a remove shares transaction.  If all share lots are removed, there will be no IRR/ROI to report for that security.  If there are lots remaining, only report on the IRR/ROI for those lots.  In the receiving account, the IRR/ROI at a per-security level (not account level) should use the information from the Add Shares transactions to calculate IRR/ROI for the full history of ownership for added lots since the original acquisition date and cost basis information is known (as well as quote data for the history).  The simplicity of this approach is you can treat per-security IRR/ROI calculations independently in the removed account and added account.  The calculations should not be linked and will work for Remove Share alone, Add Shares alone, or a combo of both.

3. The last problem is how to handle the IRR/ROI at the account, asset class, or type level (plus hierarchy roll-ups for "Investing, Brokerage, Retirement, Education") when there are Remove Shares and Add Shares transactions.  The correct approach (similar to what a brokerage firm would do) would be to calculate the IRR/ROI for the account based on the performance of all securities present up to the point of Remove Shares (i.e. based on the market value at the time of removal, equivalent to a sale at market value followed by removal of cash).  On the other side, a firm would begin to calculate performance of Added Shares starting at the point of addition (i.e. starting with the market value at the time of addition).  In others words, at the account level, historical performance is not carried forward between accounts, opposite to the treatment for individual shares.  This last issue concerns me, and perhaps would be in conflict with my points 1 and 2 above.  An alternative would be to consider removed shares to have never been associated with an account and to assign all account-level performance history to the new account (if present).  While not completely correct, this may be a simpler approach to implement and more consistent with points 1 & 2 above.  I am open to ideas and opinions here.

I hope my thoughts may be helpful in developing a solution to this problem.  I would be interested in hearing back from you as well as others on this forum for validation or improvement ideas.

Mike Lane

RickO said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled File Size Change after 5.6.


I did not see a change in my file size.

I'm just speculating, but sometimes older databases were kept within the Quicken file structure and may have been cleaned up in the update. If you have an older file to compare, you could examine to see if this is the reason.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Reduced file size of Quicken for Mac Premier 2018 Version 5.6.0 (Build 56.22351.1....

I noticed it today by looking at the auto-backup files.  5/10 pre-update file is 204.2MB and the post update is 170.8MB.  I also manually create backups as archives.  They reflect a similar reduction is size.

smayer97

Mike Lane said:

Still watching for a correct to the traded options display.  The options cost basis on portfolio view is 100 times the entry in transaction view.  Transactions are entered cost per option.  After entry each option converts to 100 shares each.  The cost in transaction is adjusted.  However in portfolio the shares are multiplied by the option price. A $300 cost becomes $30,000 cost.  I don't enter options anymore until the contracts are closed or expire.  Disappointed again but appreciate the other improvements. 

It's the "immediate" part that is the issue. If there is a pause needed for Quicken to apply this info, I believe that should be addressed. 

smayer97

jacobs said:

Marcus, as you continue to make enhancements to the reports selection UI, I want note one thing about the current UI that doesn't make sense. I select New Report, choose one of the three types (such as Transaction), choose a subtotal (such as Category), and then.... click Create Report. I then wait while Quicken creates a report which, I'd guess, is NOT what the user wants 90+% of the time; almost always, a trip to Customize is needed to select a desired date range and other filters. Instead of first creating the report and then having the user refine it and regenerate it, why not have the UI take the user directly to the Customize screen before generating the report? For a user who wants to change nothing, this adds a mere on additional click on the OK button; for users who want to set a date range and/or other filters, it's a faster path to getting the report they want. (And this change would be easy to program, as it's not changing any of the existing functionality.)

FULLY AGREE!

smayer97

jacobs said:

Marcus, another Reports UI comment: when I create a New Report, the first thing it asks me to do is name the report. That has always seemed odd to me, as I often generate Quicken reports on the fly and don't want to save or name them. If I don't type a name, Quicken names it for me: "Category Transaction 4" or similar, which is okay. But here's the real problem: the Customize dialog box has a checkbox for "Save as Custom Report" -- but every report a user generates is being saved from the instant it's created. My Reports menu is littered with quick one-time reports I don't need again, but haven't taken time to go back and delete. Why save every report, when there's already an option to Save as Custom Report for those reports a user wants to save? Why not allow reports created on the fly to be unnamed and unsaved, and require entry of a name only if and when a user wants to save the report?

Again, FULLY AGREE!

Like pretty much ANY program, you create what you want THEN you save it, IF you want to keep it, not the other way around.

smayer97

jacobs said:

Marcus, another Reports UI comment: when I create a New Report, the first thing it asks me to do is name the report. That has always seemed odd to me, as I often generate Quicken reports on the fly and don't want to save or name them. If I don't type a name, Quicken names it for me: "Category Transaction 4" or similar, which is okay. But here's the real problem: the Customize dialog box has a checkbox for "Save as Custom Report" -- but every report a user generates is being saved from the instant it's created. My Reports menu is littered with quick one-time reports I don't need again, but haven't taken time to go back and delete. Why save every report, when there's already an option to Save as Custom Report for those reports a user wants to save? Why not allow reports created on the fly to be unnamed and unsaved, and require entry of a name only if and when a user wants to save the report?

And like most programs, you can have the safety net of asking the user to save the report if there are changes and it has not been saved.

RCinNJ

Tom Wolsky said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Still backing up after 5.6 update?.


After the 5.6 update I no longer see the quick flash for the backup file when I quit. Has something changed? Is it so quick now I'm missing it, or has it stopped backing up?

Thanks very much.

Maybe backing up is faster now (a much requested improvement). I see a little spin. You can check your backups to verify they are being generated. They are in your User> Library under Application Support. I find the quickest way to get there is to Command-Click on the Quicken icon at the top the Quicken Program. This reveals the path to "Quicken". Look in the Backups folder. They are all there by date. Don't forget that backups are not generated if you haven't made any changes or new downloads.

smayer97

Tom Wolsky said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Still backing up after 5.6 update?.


After the 5.6 update I no longer see the quick flash for the backup file when I quit. Has something changed? Is it so quick now I'm missing it, or has it stopped backing up?

Thanks very much.

That is the default location. You can change the location of your backups.

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

Craig in ER

Still Sloooooow to Launch.  I had high hopes QM 5.6 would fix the very slow initial launch issue.  But, alas, for me it is still as slow as ever.  In fact I believe QM 5.6 is actually slower than 5.5.7 to launch - can it be possible.  I used to launch Quicken, go and brew a cup of tea in the microwave for 2 minutes 20 seconds and when I returned my file was just opening.  Now I do the same thing but when I return I still have to wait for the file to open.  I also notice that I don't get an indication that Quicken is launching.  By that I mean no bouncing dock icon, no spinning beachball, nothing - just wait and hope.  I am thinking about rolling back to 5.5.7 (because its slowness was faster) but don't know if I can since the data file was updated.  Or, I guess I will have to wait for QM 5.7 and hope the team has figured this problem out.  As a reminded this slowness is only for the initial launch after I start may computer for the day or after a restart.  Any relaunch after the initial is very fast (5-10 seconds).  What gives?

Craig in ER

jacobs said:

Marcus, another Reports UI comment: when I create a New Report, the first thing it asks me to do is name the report. That has always seemed odd to me, as I often generate Quicken reports on the fly and don't want to save or name them. If I don't type a name, Quicken names it for me: "Category Transaction 4" or similar, which is okay. But here's the real problem: the Customize dialog box has a checkbox for "Save as Custom Report" -- but every report a user generates is being saved from the instant it's created. My Reports menu is littered with quick one-time reports I don't need again, but haven't taken time to go back and delete. Why save every report, when there's already an option to Save as Custom Report for those reports a user wants to save? Why not allow reports created on the fly to be unnamed and unsaved, and require entry of a name only if and when a user wants to save the report?

Agree, Agree, Agree!

Craig in ER

Tom Wolsky said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Still backing up after 5.6 update?.


After the 5.6 update I no longer see the quick flash for the backup file when I quit. Has something changed? Is it so quick now I'm missing it, or has it stopped backing up?

Thanks very much.

I don't see a dialog box notifying me that a backup is being done with QM 5.6 like it did with previous versions.  I checked and the backups are being done.  As long as the backups are occurring I guess I don't really need to know about it.  I don't recall QM 2007 presenting such a dialog box either.

smayer97

Tom Wolsky said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Still backing up after 5.6 update?.


After the 5.6 update I no longer see the quick flash for the backup file when I quit. Has something changed? Is it so quick now I'm missing it, or has it stopped backing up?

Thanks very much.

QM2007 never did...  ;-)

jacobs

Tom Wolsky said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Still backing up after 5.6 update?.


After the 5.6 update I no longer see the quick flash for the backup file when I quit. Has something changed? Is it so quick now I'm missing it, or has it stopped backing up?

Thanks very much.

Craig, if you want to see a dialog, go to Preferences and check both checkboxes at the bottom of the window. You'll get a window asking you to confirm you want it to back up when you quit (if you've made any changes to your data file).

krm11

jacobs said:

Marcus, as you continue to make enhancements to the reports selection UI, I want note one thing about the current UI that doesn't make sense. I select New Report, choose one of the three types (such as Transaction), choose a subtotal (such as Category), and then.... click Create Report. I then wait while Quicken creates a report which, I'd guess, is NOT what the user wants 90+% of the time; almost always, a trip to Customize is needed to select a desired date range and other filters. Instead of first creating the report and then having the user refine it and regenerate it, why not have the UI take the user directly to the Customize screen before generating the report? For a user who wants to change nothing, this adds a mere on additional click on the OK button; for users who want to set a date range and/or other filters, it's a faster path to getting the report they want. (And this change would be easy to program, as it's not changing any of the existing functionality.)

Definitely makes more sense.

RCinNJ

Tom Wolsky said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Still backing up after 5.6 update?.


After the 5.6 update I no longer see the quick flash for the backup file when I quit. Has something changed? Is it so quick now I'm missing it, or has it stopped backing up?

Thanks very much.

RickO wrote "File > Show Backups in Finder". Easiest of all, thanks! Have I never noticed this or is this new with 2018? 

Unknown

RickO said:

And here are the detailed release notes:

Improved application performance

In 5.6, we focused on improving app performance. Customers with years and years of investment transactions were the most impacted so we zeroed our efforts around investments, but everyone should benefit.

• NEW Drastically improved launch times for customers with lots of investment history. A lot of the slowness was downloading and storing quotes which has been significantly optimized.
• NEW As part of this performance improvement, Quicken will now only download quotes for held securities, ignoring securities that are no longer owned. In the Securities list, we added a column, so you can see which securities are held. If you want to manage this yourself, you can turn this feature off and then a new column appears, so you can select which securities to update.
• NEW Switching to the investment view is significantly faster but drawing the chart can still take some time. By the way, you can hide the chart by dragging up on the bar between the chart and the portfolio table which also improves the overall performance of these views.
• NEW Switching from the Portfolio Value view to Performance view is a lot faster now.
• NEW Switching between different Groups in the Portfolio View now immediately update.

Improved report usability and functionality

• NEW The Comparison, Summary and Transaction reports created from New Report now display date range and customization settings in the upper right corner. This information also appears in printed and exported reports.
• NEW The report customization dialog has been simplified to have 2 basic settings: 1) Include any account, category, tag, or payee or 2) Include only selected accounts, categories, tags or payees. Previously it was not obvious what would happen if all accounts, categories, tags, or payees were selected.
• NEW As part of refining this experience, column selection for transaction reports has been moved to the report toolbar.
• NEW The drill down report will now remember the columns chosen so that all future drill down reports will include the same columns.
• FIXED The Comparison, Summary and Transaction reports created from New Report will now export foreign and other special characters to the CSV file.

Continued refinement of investment portfolio view

• NEW The portfolio view can now be printed, exported to a CSV file, or copied and pasted into a spreadsheet.
• NEW The portfolio view now remembers which securities have been expanded and collapsed.
• NEW Added a way to expand all or collapse all securities. CTRL-click, or right-click, the portfolio view header to get to see these options.
• NEW Securities without a cost basis will now display an Add Cost Basis button that will bring up the dialog to cost basis information.
• NEW The number of shares column will now display more than 3 decimal places.
• NEW The Y-Axis now always starts at zero.

Better eBill support in Bills & Income

• NEW Changed the way track flow works. First, Quicken asks whether you want to add an eBill or manual bill. Second, if creating an eBill, Quicken will allow you to enter any name to search for an eBiller vs forcing you to pick an existing payee. You'll link the eBill to the payee later in the process.
• NEW Added an Add Payee option to the Payee screen.
• NEW Added a column to the Payees list window to more easily select which payees should appear in the Bills & Income screen.

General improvements across the product

• NEW Improved transaction downloads. Previously, downloading from Direct Connect accounts would block you from doing anything else. Now Direct Connect works like Quicken Connect accounts in that you can continue to use Quicken while downloading is happening in the background.
• NEW In the register, the name of the column being sorted will display more boldly in order to make it more obvious which column is being used to sort the register.
• NEW Also in the register, we now always display the balance regardless of the column being sorted. When not sorted by Date or CLR, the balance column will have an italicized, dark gray color to let you know the balance won't match your statement.
• NEW Updated the Column menu in the register to allow you to more easily hide and show columns. We also added a Reset to Default menu item to get back to the default for the current account.
• FIXED Fixed a number of bugs and stability issues.

On 5-10-18, Quicken asked me if I wanted to install the latest update, so I did.  This morning, Quicken would NOT open.  I rebooted, tried again. Still wouldn't open.

I'm a web programmer, so I'm NOT a dummy - I uninstalled, rebooted, logged back in to my Quicken account, re-downloaded, installed again; signed in, tried to open my working file.

I got this error message (see screenshot).  Fortunately I do backups on exit and before updates b/c the only way to get restored was to restore my pre-update backup.

Be careful - the latest update has issues.


 

Unknown

I upgraded to 5.6.0 on Quicken 2018 for Mac from the most recent prior version. It has not played nice with my data. It deleted several transactions from over a year ago in my checking account, so tracking those down has taken a fair bit of time. One of my brokerage accounts now has an erroneous balance and I'll be tackling that next.  I have a lot of data going back to 2004. Something is wrong when upgrades cause me have to comb through all that data to find issues the upgrade has created. And then there's the question of, what else happened that I haven't discovered, and may not for some time. I appreciate the improvements, but it's a heckuva price to pay. [Side note: once I saw the out of whack balances, I went back to an earlier backup of the data file, and upgraded that one, and it too had deleted transactions, but they were different from the first upgrade. But they were all over a year old.]

Unknown

RickO said:

And here are the detailed release notes:

Improved application performance

In 5.6, we focused on improving app performance. Customers with years and years of investment transactions were the most impacted so we zeroed our efforts around investments, but everyone should benefit.

• NEW Drastically improved launch times for customers with lots of investment history. A lot of the slowness was downloading and storing quotes which has been significantly optimized.
• NEW As part of this performance improvement, Quicken will now only download quotes for held securities, ignoring securities that are no longer owned. In the Securities list, we added a column, so you can see which securities are held. If you want to manage this yourself, you can turn this feature off and then a new column appears, so you can select which securities to update.
• NEW Switching to the investment view is significantly faster but drawing the chart can still take some time. By the way, you can hide the chart by dragging up on the bar between the chart and the portfolio table which also improves the overall performance of these views.
• NEW Switching from the Portfolio Value view to Performance view is a lot faster now.
• NEW Switching between different Groups in the Portfolio View now immediately update.

Improved report usability and functionality

• NEW The Comparison, Summary and Transaction reports created from New Report now display date range and customization settings in the upper right corner. This information also appears in printed and exported reports.
• NEW The report customization dialog has been simplified to have 2 basic settings: 1) Include any account, category, tag, or payee or 2) Include only selected accounts, categories, tags or payees. Previously it was not obvious what would happen if all accounts, categories, tags, or payees were selected.
• NEW As part of refining this experience, column selection for transaction reports has been moved to the report toolbar.
• NEW The drill down report will now remember the columns chosen so that all future drill down reports will include the same columns.
• FIXED The Comparison, Summary and Transaction reports created from New Report will now export foreign and other special characters to the CSV file.

Continued refinement of investment portfolio view

• NEW The portfolio view can now be printed, exported to a CSV file, or copied and pasted into a spreadsheet.
• NEW The portfolio view now remembers which securities have been expanded and collapsed.
• NEW Added a way to expand all or collapse all securities. CTRL-click, or right-click, the portfolio view header to get to see these options.
• NEW Securities without a cost basis will now display an Add Cost Basis button that will bring up the dialog to cost basis information.
• NEW The number of shares column will now display more than 3 decimal places.
• NEW The Y-Axis now always starts at zero.

Better eBill support in Bills & Income

• NEW Changed the way track flow works. First, Quicken asks whether you want to add an eBill or manual bill. Second, if creating an eBill, Quicken will allow you to enter any name to search for an eBiller vs forcing you to pick an existing payee. You'll link the eBill to the payee later in the process.
• NEW Added an Add Payee option to the Payee screen.
• NEW Added a column to the Payees list window to more easily select which payees should appear in the Bills & Income screen.

General improvements across the product

• NEW Improved transaction downloads. Previously, downloading from Direct Connect accounts would block you from doing anything else. Now Direct Connect works like Quicken Connect accounts in that you can continue to use Quicken while downloading is happening in the background.
• NEW In the register, the name of the column being sorted will display more boldly in order to make it more obvious which column is being used to sort the register.
• NEW Also in the register, we now always display the balance regardless of the column being sorted. When not sorted by Date or CLR, the balance column will have an italicized, dark gray color to let you know the balance won't match your statement.
• NEW Updated the Column menu in the register to allow you to more easily hide and show columns. We also added a Reset to Default menu item to get back to the default for the current account.
• FIXED Fixed a number of bugs and stability issues.

I too encountered this due to after updating to 5.6 on my iMac my quicken file is automatically copied to my laptop when it is started, by way of Resilio Sync.  I clicked on my Quicken program, at 5.5.7 on the laptop, and received the bogus message above.  At this time I cannot update my laptop to the new 5.6.  Must wait for blanket release it seems.  Rather startling for sure.

Unknown

RickO said:

And here are the detailed release notes:

Improved application performance

In 5.6, we focused on improving app performance. Customers with years and years of investment transactions were the most impacted so we zeroed our efforts around investments, but everyone should benefit.

• NEW Drastically improved launch times for customers with lots of investment history. A lot of the slowness was downloading and storing quotes which has been significantly optimized.
• NEW As part of this performance improvement, Quicken will now only download quotes for held securities, ignoring securities that are no longer owned. In the Securities list, we added a column, so you can see which securities are held. If you want to manage this yourself, you can turn this feature off and then a new column appears, so you can select which securities to update.
• NEW Switching to the investment view is significantly faster but drawing the chart can still take some time. By the way, you can hide the chart by dragging up on the bar between the chart and the portfolio table which also improves the overall performance of these views.
• NEW Switching from the Portfolio Value view to Performance view is a lot faster now.
• NEW Switching between different Groups in the Portfolio View now immediately update.

Improved report usability and functionality

• NEW The Comparison, Summary and Transaction reports created from New Report now display date range and customization settings in the upper right corner. This information also appears in printed and exported reports.
• NEW The report customization dialog has been simplified to have 2 basic settings: 1) Include any account, category, tag, or payee or 2) Include only selected accounts, categories, tags or payees. Previously it was not obvious what would happen if all accounts, categories, tags, or payees were selected.
• NEW As part of refining this experience, column selection for transaction reports has been moved to the report toolbar.
• NEW The drill down report will now remember the columns chosen so that all future drill down reports will include the same columns.
• FIXED The Comparison, Summary and Transaction reports created from New Report will now export foreign and other special characters to the CSV file.

Continued refinement of investment portfolio view

• NEW The portfolio view can now be printed, exported to a CSV file, or copied and pasted into a spreadsheet.
• NEW The portfolio view now remembers which securities have been expanded and collapsed.
• NEW Added a way to expand all or collapse all securities. CTRL-click, or right-click, the portfolio view header to get to see these options.
• NEW Securities without a cost basis will now display an Add Cost Basis button that will bring up the dialog to cost basis information.
• NEW The number of shares column will now display more than 3 decimal places.
• NEW The Y-Axis now always starts at zero.

Better eBill support in Bills & Income

• NEW Changed the way track flow works. First, Quicken asks whether you want to add an eBill or manual bill. Second, if creating an eBill, Quicken will allow you to enter any name to search for an eBiller vs forcing you to pick an existing payee. You'll link the eBill to the payee later in the process.
• NEW Added an Add Payee option to the Payee screen.
• NEW Added a column to the Payees list window to more easily select which payees should appear in the Bills & Income screen.

General improvements across the product

• NEW Improved transaction downloads. Previously, downloading from Direct Connect accounts would block you from doing anything else. Now Direct Connect works like Quicken Connect accounts in that you can continue to use Quicken while downloading is happening in the background.
• NEW In the register, the name of the column being sorted will display more boldly in order to make it more obvious which column is being used to sort the register.
• NEW Also in the register, we now always display the balance regardless of the column being sorted. When not sorted by Date or CLR, the balance column will have an italicized, dark gray color to let you know the balance won't match your statement.
• NEW Updated the Column menu in the register to allow you to more easily hide and show columns. We also added a Reset to Default menu item to get back to the default for the current account.
• FIXED Fixed a number of bugs and stability issues.

Kudos.  A perfect solution to my problem.  Thanks, Robert