5.14 for Mac won't open

MaddMatt

Long time Quicken user - had to reset my community password today, as I haven't needed it in awhile. Seems every year or so Quicken completely screws up an update - I had forgotten and blindly downloaded 5.14 today. Big Mistake.

After much searching in the community, and about an hour of my morning wasted - here's where we are.

5.14 downloaded and installed
Quicken will not open. It won't open from the dock, it won't open from the finder, it won't open from the launch pad, it won't open with a single click, it won't open with a double click, it won't open from recent items, it won't open with a right click from any of those locations, it won't open with any combination of Shift, control, Command and single click, double click or right click, from any of those locations.

And it won't open via any of those methods after multiple restarts.

I tried to go back a version, but since I can't open Quicken, I can't access the Quicken menu to check for updates, etc...

It's not a hardware issue, running a fairly current iMac, with Mojave 10.14.6, all system updates performed when released. Just trying to eliminate any variables before I posted.

Everything else works - and of course Quicken is apparently on government hours with today off, so no help from them either.

Really just venting - I need to go back to my actual job, but will check back later in case anybody has solved this issue, via methods other than restarting or holding down the ctrl key.

Tomorrow I'll call support and make sure to waste at least as much of their time as they've wasted of mine today. Have a good day everybody!

smayer97

if you are able, go back to 5.13 until this is fixed (app should be in your Trash or if you use Time Machine or other backup); you should be able to retrieve it.

NOTE: You may also have to revert to a back up of your data file for this, since there is an internal change to the data base to handle the new Quick Fill feature, so you may not be able to use your data file that has been updated to 5.14.

smayer97

if you are able, go back to 5.13 until this is fixed (app should be in your Trash or if you use Time Machine or other backup); you should be able to retrieve it.

NOTE: You may also have to revert to a back up of your data file for this, since there is an internal change to the data base to handle the new Quick Fill feature, so you may not be able to use your data file that has been updated to 5.14.

MaddMatt

OK, so just to close the loop on this one for anybody else in the same boat. After 45 minutes on hold, and then another hour+ with a very nice support person on the phone and sharing my screen, here is the sort-of solution. This worked for me, but I take no responsibility if it doesn't work for you.

1) Make sure you have a back up of your quicken data files on a remote drive - luckily I use time machine to a standalone hard drive and it backs up every day.

2) Remove all instances of Quicken from your computer (unplug your backup hard drive first, so that it doesn't over-write your existing data with nothing)

I mean all instances, .dmg files, everything. drag it all to the trash, then empty the trash.

3) Update your Mac to Catalina (10.15.2) - Note, at this point the support person got very nervous - but we had exhausted all other possible solutions. It's clear that Quicken is not entirely sure about Catalina - and I don't think they are alone in this feeling, but here we are.

4) After the re-start, log in to your quicken account, and download Quicken for Mac - follow the prompts to start from an older version, and then plug your hard drive back in.

This took me back to Quicken 5.13, and retained all the data I had in Quicken up to my most recent backup. I will stay on 5.13 for a long time.

The support rep, who, again, was very nice, said that this is "rare". I sell software, "rare" means happens all the time, but hasn't quite got to critical mass that it's worth the developers time to fix it. In any case, my ticket has been logged and escalated to development while I was on the phone, hopefully that will help in some small way push them to addressing the issue.

jacobs

@MaddMatt  I'm glad you got it working. Since I haven't seen any other similar reports to your problem, I'm thinking it was something on your Mac rather than being a general Quicken problem. There are many thousands of people successfully launching Quicken (5.13 and 5.14) every day on Mojave. The fact that you couldn't launch it at makes me think it was either a macOS issue on your computer or a problem with the Quicken app installation on your computer. I'd have several suggestions of things to try short of upgrading to Catalina, but since you've done it and it works, it's a moot point.

In case of future problems, though,(or for anyone else reading this) it's generally easy to revert to a prior version should you need to: the old app is in your trash, and you just need to grab a recent data file from your backups.