QIF file import - dates in wrong century - 1917 vs 2017 -

mor734
mor734 Quicken Windows Subscription Member
edited February 2020 in Installing and Updating (Windows)
I'm just converting from mac (iBank/Banktivity) to Windows 10 Quicken. I've imported a QIF file and Quicken converted it to a QDF file. All of the imported transactions have dates in the 1900's, e.g. a 2017 transaction is dated 1917. Is this fixable?

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  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    EDIT - updated topic title to better reflect actual Q&A
  • JustMeHere
    JustMeHere Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭
    ps56k said:
    EDIT - updated topic title to better reflect actual Q&A

    The topic title could still use a bit more updating.  In fact the data didn't come from Quicken Mac and isn't being imported into Quicken Mac.  It comes from IBank and is being imported into Quicken Windows.

    What's more for the record Quicken Windows' import isn't "faulty".
    The QIF format was never made into a standard, and as such other companies/programs took it on themselves to decide on how to do things, like extend the syntax and to deal with the year 2000 problem.

    The original date format looks like:
    MM/DD/YY

    And clearly when you have YY you can't tell what century is referenced.
    I'm sure what some programs do is just "assume" that dates past a certain year are in the 21 century.

    Intuit fixed the problem with introducing two different date formats.
    MM/DD'YY  (' for add 2000, / for add 1900)
    MM/DD/YYYY

    BTW some financial institutions from different countries change the date format up like this:
    YYYY/MM/DD

    Again with no real standard, people were free to do what they wanted, and then leave it up to the programmers to decide how to deal with the mess.

    Interesting enough I believe that Intuit/Quicken were the least flexible in such imports for two reasons.  One being that everyone copied their format so they felt "why should we clean up their mess".  And the second and more important they pushed for the QFX format.  In reality the QFX for doesn't have the same use cases as the QIF format and such there is a gap there.

    And a bit of history Intuit never intended the QIF format to become what it did.  It was created as a tool for their support people to help fix problems in data files, and others just picked up on it.
    Using Quicken Subscription Premier (and have a copy of Starter to test things on)
  • mor734
    mor734 Quicken Windows Subscription Member
    Thanks for the history.
  • mor734
    mor734 Quicken Windows Subscription Member
    Sherlock's "http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/cleanqif.html" worked like a dream. Thanks so much.
  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2020
    JustMeHere said:
    ps56k said:
    EDIT - updated topic title to better reflect actual Q&A
    The topic title could still use a bit more updating.  In fact the data didn't come from Quicken Mac and isn't being imported into Quicken Mac.  It comes from IBank and is being imported into Quicken Windows.
    tnx for the QIF background... 
    I've updated the topic title again, to just reflect QIF and dates.  In the orig OP words, I just grabbed the main thoughts -
    - Converting from Mac, Importing QIF, and Dates Wrong -
    Didn't realize that "iBank/Banktivity" was the software... 
    - keep learning new things here...
    I'm just converting from mac (iBank/Banktivity) to Windows 10 Quicken. I've imported a QIF file and Quicken converted it to a QDF file.



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