Unable to create graphs from reports (Q Mac)

ctrifoso

After upgrading to 5.17.2, I am no longer able to create graphs from the custom reports. I opened a support ticket and they still have no timeline for when this will be fixed. At this point, my old quicken 2007 provides more features than this new one. Also encountered data corruption during the migration. Big regret in upgrading. Very disappointed in the lack of quality and support for Quicken for Mac.

jacobs

@ctrifoso  What version were you using before this latest upgrade? The modern Quicken Mac has never had much graphing in reports, and all of it is confined to the "old" reports from the 2010-era Quicken Essentials that served as the base for the current Quicken Mac, such as Net Worth Over Time and Spending Over Time. (And those will probably go away at some point in the future as the last of the old reports are replaced by the growing number of reports using the modern reports engine.)

If you're talking about using any of the versions of modern Quicken Mac (from Quicken 2015 through today), I don't think anything has been taken away. If you are saying that you are missing graphs from Quicken 2007, that's just functionality that doesn't exist in Quicken Mac at least yet. It hasn't seemed to be something a lot of users are clamoring for, so the developers have invested their time in building other functionality. You can visit this thread and cast your vote for this functionality. 

Meanwhile, I think most people who want to graph their reports take advantage of the fact that all the "new" reports can be exported to a .csv file and opened in Excel or Numbers and graphed (with a lot more control over graphing than ever existed in any version of Quicken).

jacobs

@ctrifoso  What version were you using before this latest upgrade? The modern Quicken Mac has never had much graphing in reports, and all of it is confined to the "old" reports from the 2010-era Quicken Essentials that served as the base for the current Quicken Mac, such as Net Worth Over Time and Spending Over Time. (And those will probably go away at some point in the future as the last of the old reports are replaced by the growing number of reports using the modern reports engine.)

If you're talking about using any of the versions of modern Quicken Mac (from Quicken 2015 through today), I don't think anything has been taken away. If you are saying that you are missing graphs from Quicken 2007, that's just functionality that doesn't exist in Quicken Mac at least yet. It hasn't seemed to be something a lot of users are clamoring for, so the developers have invested their time in building other functionality. You can visit this thread and cast your vote for this functionality. 

Meanwhile, I think most people who want to graph their reports take advantage of the fact that all the "new" reports can be exported to a .csv file and opened in Excel or Numbers and graphed (with a lot more control over graphing than ever existed in any version of Quicken).

ctrifoso

In Quicken 2007 there were about 10 standard graph reports that you could customize. I used those a lot. You could customize the Insights view with several different graphs -- income vs expenses, net worth, etc. This new version doesn't have anything like that. The home page changed after my recent upgrade from an net worth view to a spending and expenses view, which I find useless. The home page should be customizable like the older 2007 was.

jacobs

It's always interesting seeing how we all use Quicken differently. I've used Quicken for 3+ decades, and I never used the graphs in Quicken 2007 and its predecessors, nor a home page, while for you, they were very important features. 

When the re-written Quicken Mac came out in 2014, it initially had very poor reporting capabilities simply because the developers had bigger issues to tackle. (There was no budgeting. No mortgages. And other big missing pieces.) A few years later, the developers began work on writing a new reports engine and interface. There's been ongoing and significant progress for the past three years -- albeit at a much slower pace than anyone would wish. As I mentioned above, there haven't been a lot of users here pushing for graphs, so it's a lower priority on the developers' roadmap. There's no way to know what they plan for the future, nor when. Same for a customizable home page; there have been more people asking for that, and it's marked as "under consideration", so it may come somewhere in the future. 

ctrifoso

It was so disappointing to see the net worth home page go away with the last 5.17.2 patch upgrade. Reverting to a pre-upgrade backup did not restore it. It was a comprehensive dashboard view of everything being tracked in Quicken. A nice update to the Insights view in Quicken Mac 2007. I miss the 2007 feature sets that went away.

jacobs

@ctrifoso  As I mentioned, I don't use the Home page, but I was surprised that you reported it changed drastically, so I went back and fired up a copy of Quicken 2017. I found the Home page looks much the same as the current Home page. Even back in the 2017 version, it was not a "net worth view"; it had the three spending graphs at the top, bill reminders, and a budget summary -- just like the current version. Are you sure you weren't referring to the old Accounts Summary report? Prior to the latest update, reports lived in the main window, so you could always open to that; in the current version, the Accounts Summary report still exists, but it will open in a separate window if you open it. (And if you drag this report slightly to the side of the main window, it will open there every time you launch Quicken.)

ctrifoso

I mentioned features in Quicken 2007 -- really old, but the graphs were useful to me. I recently upgraded from Quicken 2007 to this latest version. A steep learning curve and unfortunately corrupt data from the upgrade requiring a lot of data re-entry. However, thank you SO much for pointing out the Accounts Summary report -- that is exactly what I was looking for! Like I said -- still learning and exploring the new version. Disappointing that support couldn't figure that out when I contacted them. I still would really like to see the ability to create graphs from the reports feature.

gmastoras

Have to say as a long time user of quicken w/ windows and now quicken for Mac....how can there be no graphs or charts. You can't really be saying export your data to excel? The dev. team needs to hippty hop on this issue.

jacobs

@gmastoras "  The developers have had a list of hundreds of features users want as they continue to build Quicken Mac from the ground up about 7 years ago. Keep in mind that Quicken Windows benefits from (and sometimes suffers from) more than 3 decades of development.

The developers largely try to listen to which features the most people are clamoring for, and graphs/charts is not something which has seemed to stir a lot of passion among Quicken Mac users. Maybe it's because we waited for years to get functional reports, which have blossomed only relatively recently over the past year or two... so perhaps they have graphics planned for a future phase of report development.

The one thing users can do to try to influence which things get developed ahead of others is to vote for idea topics on this forum. The idea thread for this is here. Take a second to go there and vote in the blue box under the first post, and feel free to add comments there about what reports or charts you find most needed.