Any easy way to copy (move) selected transactions from QM 2007 to Quicken for Mac or vice versa?

tmplee

I'm considering using both QM 2007 and "new" Quicken (5.12.2) in parallel for awhile to see how they compare. Is there any relatively easy way of exporting selected transactions (say, from a certain period from one account) from QM 2007 and importing them into the corresponding account in "new" Quicken? (or, doing it the other way around.) As best I can tell, they don't speak the same language — one will handle QIF and the other QDFM (or something like that.)

smayer97

Actually, a general work-around is to selectively export transactions from QM2007 and import those into a new QM2007 file THEN import that into new QMac. New QMac has the ability to merge import of multiple QM2007 data files. 

That said, investment transactions are always a little more tricky and limited to play around with, so YMMV with this.

Meanwhile, you can add your VOTE to Add ability to customize the asset class menu.

First, click on the underlined link above to go there, then click the little grey triangle under the VOTE count at the top of page 1 in the blue banner, so your vote will 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 (it may take a few seconds for your vote to register).

While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the 
List of Requests for Downloading Data into Quicken. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. 

Your VOTES matter!

jacobs

Simply: no. 

My suggestion is to have Quicken 2019 create a file by importing from Quicken 2007. then use the two programs in parallel for a bit, using your Quicken 2007 as you currently do and keeping it as your official "live" file and allowing you to experiment and play around in Quicken 2019. When you're ready to move to Quicken 2019 permanently, import a new file from your Quicken 2007. (You'll have to re-do some set-up and configuration work, but not a lot.)

tmplee

Unfortunately, converting from QM 2007 to "new" Quicken is non-trivial for me. Old Quicken let me use arbitrary access classes for securities, new Quicken has only a fixed set. That means I have 175 securities that convert over as "unclassified" and I need to fix all those (typically they are mid-cap, which new Quicken doesn't have.) I average 6 transactions a day over all accounts (that's what it was in July) so if I use both in parallel that's 180 transactions a month I need to enter twice. I don't care which is the "live" version and which the copy, but without further investigation it doesn't look like it's possible to simply export a bunch of transactions from one and import it into the other. I'm guessing it may be possible to simply change the file type and fix up some of the preamble entries but I haven't found anything that gives the details on how to do that and haven't had the time to examine the various interchange/transfer file types closely enough to tell.

jacobs

As I said above, you can't export selected transactions from one and import into the other.

You're correct that there is no "Mid Cap Stocks" in Quicken 2019's list of Asset Classes, which seems like a stupid oversight to me. But I guess I'd ask you if the 
asset class labels for securities are really critical enough to you to prevent you from using Quicken 2019? What if you used the "Mixed" asset class for your mid-cap stocks?

I'm not suggesting it wouldn't be desirable to have more asset classes, or user-defined asset classes, only questioning if this is a complete show-stopper. Perhaps for you, it is.

tmplee

@jacobs "only questioning if this is a complete show-stopper." Oh, definitely not — it just means I won't bother to fix the asset classes until I've completely decided to switch over.

"you can't export selected transactions from one and import into the other."
Normally I'd take that as a challenge and figure out how to do it. I'm guessing that judicious use of a regular expression editor could convert a file format that one generates into a file format the other accepts, say, QIF to QMTF, but it'd be a lot of work to understand both file types.

smayer97

Actually, a general work-around is to selectively export transactions from QM2007 and import those into a new QM2007 file THEN import that into new QMac. New QMac has the ability to merge import of multiple QM2007 data files. 

That said, investment transactions are always a little more tricky and limited to play around with, so YMMV with this.

Meanwhile, you can add your VOTE to Add ability to customize the asset class menu.

First, click on the underlined link above to go there, then click the little grey triangle under the VOTE count at the top of page 1 in the blue banner, so your vote will 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 (it may take a few seconds for your vote to register).

While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the 
List of Requests for Downloading Data into Quicken. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. 

Your VOTES matter!

tmplee

@smayer97 Thanks! — both for the workaround, which is worth a try, and for the pointers to where to vote for desired changes. I’d lost track of where those were. I’ll root around those when i get back to my computer— too awkward on the phone.

smayer97

Ywc. 

Unfortunate that Quicken does not make Voting more visible. In this forum it is quite buried and much harder to find. 

BTW the ENTIRE list can be found here:
Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac

With a partially categorized version here:
EXPANDED List of Categorized IDEAS of Feature Requests and Enhancements to Vote On
(this page has been messed up during the migration from the previous GetSat forum...I hope to get around to cleaning it up some day)

tmplee

@smayer97 oops. I thanked you too soon. exporting from 2007 to QIF, importing to a new QM 2007 file, then importing that to "new" Quicken over an existing file didn't exactly work. All the transactions (let say a couple dozen scattered over a half dozen accounts) were imported just fine — except that new accounts were created for ALL of my accounts, whether there were any new transactions in them or not. So, I had a checking account called CheckingNewer and now I have both that and one called "CheckingNewer 2". All my older transactions are in the first one and all the new ones (the ones being transferred) are in the second one. I think it may have something to do with the "looking for Cloud account" step that happens just before the real importing since I've deleted all the Cloud accounts that were set up by various experiments. I'll try some more experimenting and let you know.

jacobs

@tmplee For banking accounts (checking, savings, credit cards), it's easy to select all the transactions in one account register and drag them onto the name of another account in the left sidebar. Once you move the transactions, you can remove the duplicate, empty account by control-clicking in the left sidebar. For investment accounts, you can't drag-and-drop transactions, but you can use the "Transfer Shares" command which was added earlier this year to move securities to the desired investment account while preserving the cost basis in the destination account. But this would be tedious to have to do multiple times and/or if you have a lot of accounts, so while it's technically possible, I don't think it's a practical solution for doing what you originally said you wanted to do. 

tmplee

@jacobs It does indeed look like Quicken has bent over backwards to make it impossible to export transactions from one file and import them into another! I played around with all the varieties that QM 2007 and "new" Quicken can import and export and I can't get any of them to do what I want them to do — in general, "new" Quicken either refuses to import a given file type or if it will import it, insists on creating new accounts for any existing accounts (or a whole new file.) I suspect one possible way to do it might be to edit one of the kinds files that can be exported so it looks like a bank or brokerage download file, but I have no idea what the format of those are! … OK, I did find where I could get the OFX spec, but am definitely too lazy at this time of night to get and look at it.

tmplee

@jacobs Eureka! I think I figured out how to do it. Instead of importing the whole QM 2007 file that contains the desired transactions, open the package, extra the data file, and import that. You'll get duplicate accounts, but all the transactions will go into the "right" account. The new ones will either be empty, for investment accounts, or complete duplicates — original and additional transactions — for cash/checking accounts. At least that's what it looks like on first attempt. I'll do more experiments tomorrow.