Better Report Print Formatting (4 Merged Votes)

Bonnie Optekman

Please make it easier to print out a report. It needs to be more WYSIWYG. Right now, a transaction/category report with five columns has to be sized at roughly half the screen to get all columns to print on a single page without "scale to fit." And it takes a lot of trial and error.

Allowing more customization such as the setting of margins would also help a great deal.

Printing these reports is absolutely key for them to be useful in financial planning and doing taxes. It's the reason I use Quicken.

Last year, when I switched from PC to Mac, I actually had to download them to Excel before printing so thanks for fixing that but I was told making the screen look more like the printed page was in the works. It's ironic that using Quicken on the Mac is less graphically friendly than on a PC.

[See also this Idea request for improved report formatting]

&BobsurUncle68

Agree I think I am going to get a new Windows computer and go back to Windows.

Bonnie Optekman

One new comment on this thread. The report (on screen nor printed) did NOT have accurate category totals. They looked odd so I manually added a couple of categories and found the categories in the reports weren't right. Thought you'd want to know.

jacobs

@Bonnie Optekman I know you're trying to be helpful with your comment above, but without more detail, it's almost impossible to know what you're experiencing and figure out why. There have not been widespread reports about reports having incorrect totals, so it's possible it's something with the settings in your report(s), or perhaps you've uncovered a bona fide bug -- but more information is needed to try to get to the bottom of it. If you're able to post screen shots showing both the set-up of the report and a section of the report showing an incorrectly totaled category (without revealing any too-personal data), that would be very helpful.

Sometimes when a user gets a report with data they say isn't correct, it turns out to be a filter setting in the report.  For instance, a user has Tags set to all tags, which is not the same as "any or no tag", an dither setting causes some expected data to not appear in a report. If you care to describes your report set-up in detail, ideally with screen shots, it might help us pinpoint what's going wrong.

azsalsman

I have been frustrated for some time with the limited and very rudimentary options for printing reports. Simply printing my reports results in very large font sizes and, thus, takes LOTS of pages to print what could have taken a size page.

There are some ways to adjust this through the Mac print settings but does not produce the desired results...simply reduced to print on part of the pages.

Why can't Quicken not offer some basic print settings? It does not have to be fancy but to have control over the font size, header information, and maybe column widths would be an extremely helpful feature.

Quicken......please....please...please!

jacobs

@azsalsman I think most of us Quicken Mac users want the developers to provide more control over reports, but I just want to take a minute to make you aware of some things that have been added recently that do make a substantial improvement, albeit not all the things we might want. 

The reports in Quicken are in a somewhat confusing state right now. The reports listed by name underneath "New Report" on the Reports menu are all the "old reports" which were originally developed for Quicken Essentials back in 2010-2011 and were brought forward when Essentials evolved into Quicken Mac 2015. There are a lot of limitations with those reports, so starting two years ago, the developers set out to build an all-new reporting engine. The results of that work are tucked away under "New Report", which looks simple but is actually the gateway to all the new reports. Eventually, once they finish adding functionality to the new reports, they will likely do away with the old reports.

So, if you're using any of the old reports, it pays to experiment with New Report to see if you can create the reports you need. (New Reports can replace many, but not all, of the old reports.) Any report you create using New Report allows you to add or remove columns from a report, to re-order the columns, and to adjust the width of the columns. One really important new feature is tiny but immensely helpful: when you select to Print are report (to a printer or PDF), there's a Scale to Fit checkbox…



… which allows you to force wide reports to fit one (or two) pages wide.

Now, this doesn't allow for margin adjustments or fixed point size changes, so there's still more work they could do to optimize user control over reports, but to me, these changes have made what was once virtually unusable reports relatively manageable for my needs.

azsalsman

Thanks. The changes you describe are very helpful and certainly heads and tails above former worlds. It is nice to know that they are "hidden" and need to be advertised a little more. However, customizing font sizes and markings and the like would be HUGE plus to the mix.

jacobs

Yes, it's been a bit puzzling that they've gone through multiple releases with ever-more functionality hidden behind the innocuous-looking "New Report"; this has confused many users. I'm guessing from what we see and a few comments the product manager has made on this forum that they're trying to build all the functionality into the New Reports, and then they'll change the user interface to make it easier to discover (e.g. perhaps some pre-built reports, changes to the Reports menu, or being able to enter all your criteria up-front rather than creating a report you don't want and then customizing it into what you do want!).

The heartening thing to me is that they have been plugging away at adding new reports functionality every couple months, and clearly understand that users are demanding more customizability. The last update two months ago added the powerful ability to define both rows and columns in a report, a crucial need which hadn't existed in the old reports. There's certainly more to do, but I've found that the current tools have made reports pretty usable for me. For instance, while I can't specify a font point size, the only real reason I'd want to set a point size is to get things to fit on a page -- and adjusting the column width and using Shrink to Fit basically does that for me.

azsalsman

Yes. If this was my biggest issue in life, then I am doing really well!!!!!  

Quicken_Tyka

Hello All,

The Community Support team regularly reviews long-standing posts and Ideas for relevancy and current interest

This Idea seems to have stalled and we would like to gauge the current interest in this request. If you would like to see this idea implemented, please add your vote and a comment explaining how this idea would be beneficial for you.

More information, including steps to vote and how to submit your own Ideas for future product features/improvements, is also available here.

Thank you,

Quicken Community Support Team

jacobs

@Quicken_Tyka  It's exactly because these Idea threads sit so long that it's hard to answer your question. There have been several improvements in reports and report printing since this thread was started; however, features that users ask about fairly often -- such as being able to adjust font/font size, reduce margins, or make adjustments to large areas of wasted white space. These comments/complaints are spread across many posts and don't make it to this one -- but there can be no mistaking that Mac users are still looking for more control over formatting reports. Here are just a few such comments I found in a quick search of other threads:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20108436/#Comment_20108436
"Yes, I can easily switch Portrait to LS and have done so. I've eliminated some columns and can now print with reasonable amounts of paper. However, I would still like to know, if it's possible, how to reduce font sizes (or change fonts) and change margins in order to maximize space."

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7856822/can-i-increase-font-size-for-reports-view-q-mac
"I would like the size of fonts to be bolder and larger in the 'reports' view. Is this possible? Just like the register view."

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7877898/how-do-i-adjust-margins-and-font-size-when-printing-reports-q-mac
"How do I adjust margins and font size when printing reports"

There are many others one can find with a bit of searching, but this illustrates the point.

Finally, there's the Mother of Report Formatting Idea Threads here:

Add Report Formatting Options to Quicken for Mac
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7330402/add-report-formatting-options-to-quicken-for-mac-136-legacy-votes/p1

That idea thread has 148 votes, and has been marked "Under Consideration" for 20 months now with no change in status. And again, the problem with a 4 year-old idea thread like this is that some of the report feature requests have been implemented over time, while others are still open requests/wishes. There's no good way in a forum like this to clean out the requests which have been completed and highlight those which haven't.

But there should be some way to convey to the development team that users clearly want additional report formatting controls that don't currently exist. If I were to attempt to summarize briefly, I'd say key asks include (1) control over report margins, (2) control over fonts and font size, (3) ability to set multiple levels of sort order, and (4) ability to specify fields to be subtotaled. If I'm missing other features, hopefully others will post them below.

Thanks.

smayer97

SO AGREED!!!

But to highlight, THIS idea thread is focused primarily on the spacing issue-- margins and ultimately white space.

When compared with QM2007, QMac is currently very inefficient in the use of space, resulting in many more pages to produce a report compared to its older cousin, which was much more compact without crammed.