Any possibility of a Quicken Guide being published?

Ken W.

It would be extremely useful if a Quicken Mac User Guide were written/published. I still have my copy of the (obsolete) Quicken Official User Guide for Quicken 2002 Macintosh Deluxe. It would be extremely useful if someone made such an item available for the new versions of Quicken. I am aware of the Help Menu available within the Quicken application itself. That item is of very limited use.

mshiggins

They are not even publishing the Quicken for Windows Official Guide any more. It's very doubtful they would publish a Mac version. 

jacobs

mshiggins said:

They are not even publishing the Quicken for Windows Official Guide any more. It's very doubtful they would publish a Mac version. 

Are you sure the Windows version is dead? The latest update to that book was less than a year ago, in March 2018, and encompassed changes included in Quicken 2018.

As for a Mac version, I guess the book publishers don't believe there's enough of a market for such a book to pay someone to create it from scratch and then update it every year or two.

@Ken W. You might try exploring these links of the Quicken website for some getting started information:

https://www.quicken.com/complete-guide-getting-started-quicken-2018-mac

https://www.quicken.com/quicken-tips

smayer97

All the above are incomplete and fall short. Check out the following: https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/quicken-for-mac-faq-where-to-find-a-help-guide-for-2016-onward

mshiggins

smayer97 said:

All the above are incomplete and fall short. Check out the following: https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/quicken-for-mac-faq-where-to-find-a-help-guide-for-2016-onward

What "all the above" are you referring to? Are you dissing the Quicken Official Guide?

mshiggins

jacobs said:

mshiggins said:

They are not even publishing the Quicken for Windows Official Guide any more. It's very doubtful they would publish a Mac version. 

Are you sure the Windows version is dead? The latest update to that book was less than a year ago, in March 2018, and encompassed changes included in Quicken 2018.

Yes, I am sure.  In the past, there was an annual update.  The normal annual update of the Guide did not take place this year. Maybe it will be back next year,

jacobs

There wasn’t an “annual update” to the software this year either.

Seriously, now that Quicken is making periodic updates rather than annual editions, perhaps the book publisher has determined they can go 18 or 24 months between new book editions, which is a huge cost saving for the publisher.

In any case, the statement was that they aren’t publishing the book anymore; just because it hasn’t been updated in 11 months does not mean it’s no longer being published.

smayer97

mshiggins said:

smayer97 said:

All the above are incomplete and fall short. Check out the following: https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/quicken-for-mac-faq-where-to-find-a-help-guide-for-2016-onward

What "all the above" are you referring to? Are you dissing the Quicken Official Guide?

Quicken has never released a complete guide for Mac and their "Complete Guide..." online is incomplete. Even the videos from @John in NC are more comprehensive, if only a little out of date. But all put together, they fill in many of the gaps.

RCinNJ

smayer97 said:

Even the videos from @John in NC are more comprehensive, if only a little out of date. But all put together, they fill in many of the gaps.

The problem for a new user with these videos for QM 2016 is a new user doesn't know what is out of date and needs to be ignored. 

smayer97

For the most part, there is not that much visually that has changed, so there is really not much significant to ignore. Most of the differences are in settings, etc.

It certainly better than having nothing for guidance, for which Quicken provides very little.

Until someone updates these, we have to leverage what is available.

mshiggins

jacobs said:

There wasn’t an “annual update” to the software this year either.

Seriously, now that Quicken is making periodic updates rather than annual editions, perhaps the book publisher has determined they can go 18 or 24 months between new book editions, which is a huge cost saving for the publisher.

In any case, the statement was that they aren’t publishing the book anymore; just because it hasn’t been updated in 11 months does not mean it’s no longer being published.

The decision was no book this year. Unless things change, I don't think there will be future editions. 

JohnC

Are there any plans to create an actual users manual? The Quicken help from the program is quite useless and outdated. The detail needs to be improved. While the Community is useful, mostly it's a gathering of work arounds to issues that haven't been fixed and probably won't be.

For example, there are questions about the tax planner all over the place and no step by step instructions on how to use it. How would one initially know that categories need to be set up and tied to tax line items. While the Community is useful, mostly it's a gathering of work arounds to issues that haven't been fixed and probably won't be.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @JohnC

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your question, although I apologize that this feature isn't currently offered.

Be sure to navigate to the top of this post and click the up arrow to add your vote!

Ideas are reviewed by our development team to see what people would like to be available in the future.

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

JohnC

[Removed-Sarcasm/Off-Topic]

Independent book publishers are not the solution. A proper manual should be created on the Quicken site that is continually updated to reflect the subscription model. If Quicken is designed not to perform a function it should state so.

jacobs

@JohnC  Your original comment referenced issues with the Tax Planner, and I'd note that Quicken Mac does not have a Tax Planner. So whatever problems you experience with Quicken Windows doesn't really have any bearing on the topic here: a user manual for Quicken Mac.

In terms of such a user manual, I'd say several things:

(1) Most software developers no longer create comprehensive user manuals or guides. That's not a good thing, in my opinion, but it's the reality of the software business. Creating comprehensive and authoritative guides requires a lot of time (and money) for writing, testing, editing, documenting, etc., and in an era where programs are updated frequently and most users don't use manuals, it's just not common to have what we had in the earlier days of the personal computer industry. There's no comprehensive user manual for Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop; there are combinations of quick-start guides, websites and videos, which is pretty much what Quicken has. (The website for, say, Adobe Photoshop is far better organized and more comprehensive than the one for Quicken Mac, but it's still the same non-manual approach.)

(2) You say independent book publishers are not the solution, but for many years, the definitive manual for Quicken Windows was a book published by a third-party book publisher, "Quicken for Windows: The Official Guide". It was not created by Quicken (or Intuit, when they owned Quicken), but carried an "endorsed by the makers of Quicken" tag which meant this was a sanctioned reference, and likely the cooperation of members of the Quicken Windows team to ensure accuracy. There's an entire publishing industry of third-party "official guide" and "unofficial guide" and "missing manual" books for a wide variety of software applications.

The book for Quicken Windows hasn't been updated in three years, so I don't know if the publisher has pulled the plug on it. And there was never an equivalent book for Quicken Mac, likely because the market wasn't seen as big enough to support the significant costs of publishing such a book. 

(3) I do believe that Quicken should devote resources to having a more comprehensive and better-organized website which functions as a user guide. the current Quicken resources are scattered, not easy to find, not always kept up-to-date, and frequently don't have clear separation between Mac and Windows products which operate differently. Although I don't think it's realistic for them to ever create a multi-hundred page book (or PDF) that's a comprehensive manual ever again, I think there's a lot of room for improvement in a more unified and organized website of resources to help users learn the ins and outs of the programs.

(4) You wrote that the in-product Help is "quite useless and outdated". I don't know if you were referring to Quicken Windows or Quicken Mac there, but I'd disagree with that assessment for Quicken Mac. As I periodically refer fellow users to Quicken Help, I've found it is mostly kept up-to-date with new features and changes. Quicken Help is by no means a comprehensive user manual, but it does provide basic help for most features in the program. 

JohnC

@Jacobs I originally posted my comment in Product Ideas for Windows. 2/3 of my comment was removed for being sarcastic/off topic (guess I stated a lot of what you said but less politely) then it was merged with the MAC topic by community mods.