Wht happens with the categories when upgrading from quicken 98 to 2004?

rarsa

(Yes, eye rolling is accepted)
I used Quicken for several years before switching to something else. I have old QDATA files created with quicken 98).
I want to convert and open them and export the transactions for some historical analysis of my finances, however.
I followed the instructions and installed quicken 2004. After I opened the old file and converted to 2004, I noticed that the transactions were not categorized, which was the main purpose for me for using quicken back then. I am sure the transactions had categories as I have some old reports that show them.
Am I doing something wrong? or does the upgrade remove the categories from Quicken 98 files?

I know it's a long shot but hopefully someone went through this and remembers something.

Thanks!

NotACPA

How did you  do that 98 to 04 upgrade?

Did you follow THIS process: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7183812/quicken-faq-how-and-when-do-i-use-an-intermediate-version-to-convert-older-versions-of-quicken

Chris_QPW

About the only thing I can think of is that you are missing one or more of the files.  There is a set of files that make up the Quicken "data file".  But even that seems unlikely since as far as I know that categories would be in the main database/table which has the transactions.  There shouldn't be any way they are "separated out".

rarsa

> @NotACPA said:
> How did you  do that 98 to 04 upgrade?
> Did you follow THIS process: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7183812/quicken-faq-how-and-when-do-i-use-an-intermediate-version-to-convert-older-versions-of-quicken

Thank you,
I followed this instructions, but they are basically the same
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-and-when-use-intermediate-version-convert-older-versions-quicken

rarsa

> @Chris_QPW said:
> About the only thing I can think of is that you are missing one or more of the files.  There is a set of files that make up the Quicken "data file".  But even that seems unlikely since as far as I know that categories would be in the main database/table which has the transactions.  There shouldn't be any way they are "separated out".

Then maybe for some strange reason the files I have originally didn't have categories. Maybe I made a mistake back then and copied the files before adding categories, or reloaded qif files or who knows.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

splasher

The way I remember it, Q'98 requires Q2000 as an intermediate conversion step before moving on to Q2004.

Good luck finding a version of that.

thecreator

rarsa said:

(Yes, eye rolling is accepted)
I used Quicken for several years before switching to something else. I have old QDATA files created with quicken 98).
I want to convert and open them and export the transactions for some historical analysis of my finances, however.
I followed the instructions and installed quicken 2004. After I opened the old file and converted to 2004, I noticed that the transactions were not categorized, which was the main purpose for me for using quicken back then. I am sure the transactions had categories as I have some old reports that show them.
Am I doing something wrong? or does the upgrade remove the categories from Quicken 98 files?

I know it's a long shot but hopefully someone went through this and remembers something.

Thanks!

Hi @rarsa ,

Did you do a Manual Backup of your Data File using Quicken 1998, prior to installing Quicken 2004 and converting the files?

If you read and expanded the links: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-and-when-use-intermediate-version-convert-older-versions-quicken?priorityCode=1348800000

If you expanded the links and read them and collapsed the links to read:

After the process is complete, verify the information is correct. If you find errors or issues with your data, it is best to manually correct them. 

You need to Manually correct the data file errors, between steps.

Chris_QPW

splasher said:

The way I remember it, Q'98 requires Q2000 as an intermediate conversion step before moving on to Q2004.

Good luck finding a version of that.

The article says Quicken 2004 will convert files back to Quicken 98.

I do know that Quicken 2004 will properly convert my "Quicken Floppy" data files that have a last entry of 1992.  But I have no idea what was the last version of Quicken they were converted to since in 1996 I started using Quicken again, and it is possible that I converted these old data files with a new version, and there isn't any way to tell what version of Quicken they were last converted to.

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth I just created a data file in Quicken Windows 6 and then converted it to Quicken Windows 2004.

Chris_QPW

The above was all done on a 32-bit version of Windows 10.  (I know that at least the Quicken Windows 6 installer will not work on a 64-bit version of Windows because it is 16-bit).

splasher

Chris_QPW, 
That article that that explains about using 2004 & 2013, used to refer to earlier versions and provided a copy of QT2000 for the pre-2000 data files.

volvogirl

In case anyone is interested, Quicken versions/years and data file sets

https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-data-file-set-extensions

Chris_QPW

@splasher Yeah, I seem to remember that, but just like the instructions tell you that 98 is the lowest it will convert and that you need 2013 to files from 2004 to 2009 their instructions tend to be "conservative" (not accurate) of what really is required.

The common explanation for that has always been "well it is some times needed".  But I think the more likely explanation is "depending on how a given data file is corrupted, a given version of Quicken might react to it differently during the conversion."

rarsa

> @thecreator said:
> (Quote)
> Did you do a Manual Backup of your Data File using Quicken 1998, prior to installing Quicken 2004 and converting the files?

I backed up the files by copying them. I don't have Quicken 1998 any more. But yes, I expanded the instructions and followed them up

rarsa

> @Chris_QPW said:
> The above was all done on a 32-bit version of Windows 10.  (I know that at least the Quicken Windows 6 installer will not work on a 64-bit version of Windows because it is 16-bit).

Well, I see that in your test the categories remained in the upgraded version.

I did my upgrade on a Windows 7 installation in a virtual machine. Everything seems to have gone OK, so probably i got the wrong files without the items categorized (it's just three years, from 2001 to 2003).

I will search for a copy of Quicken 98 to see if the original files had the categories. However, I remember that I stopped using quicken when my version stopped working and was forcing me to upgrade. I felt my files had been hijacked and switched to an open source alternative. I still use it as an example as for why closed source is bad.

Chris_QPW

It might very hard to find a copy of Quicken 98.  And frankly I somewhat doubt that is the problem.

And just because you mentioned it, how much money have you paid to the open source personal finances software developers?

I suspect the answer is zero.  Which might be great for the individual, but a terrible way to run a company.  Not to mention the fact that I bet you wouldn't work for free, like the developers of that program did.

As you can tell as long time developer, I'm not as inclined to think open source is great idea.