Quicken Mac 2007 Crashes On Export To .QIF File

ThriftyDillo

Quicken 2007 is crashing when I try to Export to a .QIF file. It also has random crashes when I try to generate certain types of reports. I assume this means that there is some sort of file corruption. Is there a utility which can repair my data file?

smayer97

What specific version are you using? If it is 16.2.4 then simply press CMD-OPT-B to re-index your file. That often cures a lot of ills in the file.

Be sure to have a backup before you do this, just in case.

There are some other things to try if that does not help.

smayer97

If you are trying to migrate to QEM, you should not have to export to QIF. Though I am not familiar with QEM that much, I believe you simply create a new data file in QEM and import the QM2007 data file directly. No QIF required.

BTW, you clearly are running on a very old Mac, since QM2007 v16.0 is a PPC version.

This may not matter but do be aware that QEM will not run on Mac OS X newer than 10.11 (El capitan).

smayer97

A couple of quick questions...

1. In the older version of QM2007, to activate the re-index you have to have the Account list open, then press CMD-OPT-B. Then you should see a progress dialog box. Did you see this?

2. Again, why are you trying to use QIF to migrate to QEM? QEM can import the QM2007 data file directly.

As for trying more, you can also try using the Save a Copy under the File menu. That is another way of trying to clean-up the internals of the database, whereby Quicken creates a new data file with the existing data.

jacobs

@ThriftyDillo As you likely know, Quicken Essentials is old software which is no longer supported or updated. Essentials served a the core code base for the modern Quicken Mac, and many, many improvements have been made in the years since Quicken Essentials was sold. And if you track any investments in Quicken 2007, you will lose this capability in Quicken Essentials. Rather than update from one old software to another old software, you might want to consider a more recent version of Quicken Mac.

If you can find a used copy of Quicken 2017 for sale somewhere, you can use it for manual data entry indefinitely; if you purchase the current Quicken Mac 2020, you get a large number of additional features and fixes but you either have to commit to paying for the annual subscription or put up with losing some screen space after your initial subscription expires. But in any of these cases, you will be using a more modern version than Quicken Essentials, with better likelihood to be able to update your data file in the future and the ability to run on more modern versions of macOS.

Going back to your original question, the process of re-indexing your 2007 data file, as explained by smayer97 above, is the only utility for repairing corruption to a data file -- and it solves many inexplicable problems with data that appears to be missing. And as also mentioned, Save a Copy re-writes your data into a new file in a way that sometimes fixes stubborn data problems (although potentially losing some data, if records are truly corrupted, in the process). After doing one or both of these procedures, do not try to export your data to a .QIF file; simply import it into whichever version of Quicken you are using.

smayer97

What specific version are you using? If it is 16.2.4 then simply press CMD-OPT-B to re-index your file. That often cures a lot of ills in the file.

Be sure to have a backup before you do this, just in case.

There are some other things to try if that does not help.

ThriftyDillo

I'm using Quicken 2007 v16.0 - R1 and trying to import the data into Quicken essentials 2010 v1.7.4. After rebuilding the database as you suggested, I was able to export a .QIF file, but Q 2010 does not recognize it for Import or Convert. The same applies with an un-exported copy of the original file.

smayer97

If you are trying to migrate to QEM, you should not have to export to QIF. Though I am not familiar with QEM that much, I believe you simply create a new data file in QEM and import the QM2007 data file directly. No QIF required.

BTW, you clearly are running on a very old Mac, since QM2007 v16.0 is a PPC version.

This may not matter but do be aware that QEM will not run on Mac OS X newer than 10.11 (El capitan).

ThriftyDillo

Yes, I'm running Snow Leopard w/Rosetta for Q 2007 (my latest OS in use is Mavericks), but I tried the export on a PPC as well and it still failed. BTW, while the Q 2007 export didn't crash the program when reading over a network, it did do so locally both in Snow Leopard and Tiger. I'm still thinking I have a corrupted database. Is there anything else I can try to rebuild the database?

smayer97

A couple of quick questions...

1. In the older version of QM2007, to activate the re-index you have to have the Account list open, then press CMD-OPT-B. Then you should see a progress dialog box. Did you see this?

2. Again, why are you trying to use QIF to migrate to QEM? QEM can import the QM2007 data file directly.

As for trying more, you can also try using the Save a Copy under the File menu. That is another way of trying to clean-up the internals of the database, whereby Quicken creates a new data file with the existing data.

jacobs

@ThriftyDillo As you likely know, Quicken Essentials is old software which is no longer supported or updated. Essentials served a the core code base for the modern Quicken Mac, and many, many improvements have been made in the years since Quicken Essentials was sold. And if you track any investments in Quicken 2007, you will lose this capability in Quicken Essentials. Rather than update from one old software to another old software, you might want to consider a more recent version of Quicken Mac.

If you can find a used copy of Quicken 2017 for sale somewhere, you can use it for manual data entry indefinitely; if you purchase the current Quicken Mac 2020, you get a large number of additional features and fixes but you either have to commit to paying for the annual subscription or put up with losing some screen space after your initial subscription expires. But in any of these cases, you will be using a more modern version than Quicken Essentials, with better likelihood to be able to update your data file in the future and the ability to run on more modern versions of macOS.

Going back to your original question, the process of re-indexing your 2007 data file, as explained by smayer97 above, is the only utility for repairing corruption to a data file -- and it solves many inexplicable problems with data that appears to be missing. And as also mentioned, Save a Copy re-writes your data into a new file in a way that sometimes fixes stubborn data problems (although potentially losing some data, if records are truly corrupted, in the process). After doing one or both of these procedures, do not try to export your data to a .QIF file; simply import it into whichever version of Quicken you are using.

ThriftyDillo

OK, that worked :smiley: I was able to use the import utility in Q 2010 to bring the old data in w/o having to export from Q 2007. Thank you both so much for your help!