HELP! Quicken essentials 2010 backup file won’t import into Quicken Starter (2019 Direct Download).

DDM001

I recently upgraded from an old (early 2011) MacBook Pro to a new MacBook Air (2020) and I no longer have the MacBook Pro. My Quicken essentials 2010 backup file won’t import into Quicken Starter (2020) running on the new MacBook Air with macOS Catalina v. 10.15.6. When I try to import my backup, I get a message “migration error.” I still have the Quicken essentials 2010 software, but it is not compatible with macOS Catalina. What do I do? Thanks in advance!

Quicken Anja

Hello @DDM001,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community and telling us about your issue, though I apologize that you are experiencing this.

I suggest you try Spotlight searching your Mac to see if there's a different backup you might be able to use. To Spotlight search, navigate to the top-right corner of your Mac screen and click on the magnifying glass symbol. A search bar will open and type in ".quickendata". When results are found, scroll to the bottom of the list and click Show all in Finder.

If any other backup files are found, you can drag and drop them to your desktop to locate them easier in order to use them for the conversion.

Let us know how it goes!

DDM001

Thank you for your prompt response Quicken Anja!
Unfortunately, the reason we are having all this trouble is because my wife traded in her old MacBook Pro after backing up the data and then wiping the drive(s). As you correctly observed, the .quickendata backup she has was created with a version of Quicken Essentials 2010 that probably had many periodic, incremental Quicken software updates beyond that of the purchased software (that we still have). Yesterday, through a friend, we located a MacBook that was still running the same OS that was on my wife’s old MacBook Pro (Sierra), we loaded Quicken Essentials 2010 and tried to import the .quickendata backup. We were unable to import and got the same error message that my wife got when she tried to import the backup into her new MacBook Air, running Quicken Starter 2019... “migration error.”
My wife spent a long time on the phone with Quicken customer support, all to no avail. I wish we had thought to export the backup data to an Excel file as well as the Quicken backup format.
I am stumped and don’t have a clue as to how we might recover data going back to 2009. I appreciate your help. Thank you!