Year End Copy for Mac

Punkin

My Mac desktop installation of Quicken is moving sooooo slow. I think it's because I haven't created year-end copies in several years and have way too much data. But, when I research how to create a a copy, it tells me to choose File > File Operation > Year End Copy. But that doesn't exist on my version? I checked, says 6.11 is the latest version and is installed / updated.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Punkin

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to ask your question. The Mac version does not have the ability to archive or create a Year-End Copy like the windows version.

There is an ongoing Idea available here, unfortunately, this Idea is not on the development roadmap and will not be available in the Mac version anytime soon.

I apologize for not having better news.

-Quicken Tyka

UKR

There are some reports that Quicken Mac performance gets worse with every additional window (report) that's open. Please check the Windows Menu and close unneeded open windows, to see if that improves performance.

smayer97

To be clear as to what @ukr is saying, performance may be impacted by additional REPORT windows. What can easily get missed are report windows that are hidden behind the main Quicken window...

A side rant... what a POOR UI design, which was borrowed from the QWin model... to have a main window cover up everything, literally hiding other windows. QMac never had this until Quicken decided to "unify" the look and so QMac inherited this UI mis-design, which goes against the very paradigm of using WINDOWS.

Now you have to make extra effort to work around this poor design, to either shrink it (but Quicken limits how small) and potentially lose access to some features, move it making it awkward because you cannot move different parts independently like you could prior to this "unified" design, or make mental note that there may be windows behind the main window; all of which makes it more cumbersome to navigate around, especially when you need to seem multiple windows open at the same time. /rant

jacobs

smayer97 said:

Now you have to make extra effort to work around this poor design, to either shrink it (but Quicken limits how small) and potentially lose access to some features, move it making it awkward because you cannot move different parts independently like you could prior to this "unified" design, or make mental note that there may be windows behind the main window; all of which makes it more cumbersome to navigate around, especially when you need to seem multiple windows open at the same time. /rant

It isn't necessary to do all these machinations to find open windows: there's a Window menu in Quicken Mac, and the bottom of that menu shows by name all the open report windows, account register windows, and support windows. So all that's needed is to know/remember to pull down the Window menu.

That said, I completely agree that having windows in Quicken Mac becoming hidden is poor interface design, and I believe the developers need to create a visual indicator of open windows because they may be hidden from view and adversely affecting performance. I often open several reports, and if I'm not thinking to check the Window menu, especially if I quit Quicken and come back sometime later, there's no proactive indication to the user about hidden windows. 

smayer97

I am familiar with the Windows menu. I did not mention it because it is standard and so obvious. But as you acknowledged, this design is poor. The use of Windows is a very VISUAL paradigm, which this design does not follow that convention.

No need to design an "indicator"... that would just be a work-around. The "indicator" is the VISIBILITY to all windows, with the Windows menu as the "back-up". Just get rid of the fixed background and menus tied to that window, which is a hold-over from the Windows UI design that breaks long-established windowing conventions, at least on the Mac.

The better design is to have those components be in independent windows (list of accounts, Calendar, Projected Balance graph, etc, etc), and menus to be tied to the menu bar to access those components and dynamically changing based on the forefront window (or at most tying some related menus to the respective component window), like QM2007 does and most Mac applications. Except for reports and Registers, this design limits you to only see one of these components at a time, so only affords an in-then-out approach... completely goes against the whole windowing paradigm...

jacobs

First, I prefer the design of the main window with the left left sidebar, and being able to jump from account to account within the main window, to the old Quicken 2007 interface, where everything was in its own window. (You could easily bury one window under another in that interface as well, and I spent a lot of time moving windows around in Quicken 2007 to see what I needed.) And in Quicken Mac, you can open every register, report, and budget in its own window, just like Quicken 2007 if you wish, and you can close the main window if you wish, making it Quicken 2007-like. You can also open all the lists (categories, securities, tax, payees, etc.) in separate windows. The problem is too many windows, and being too easy to hide some windows behind others.

That said, I am making an assumption that since the developers have just updated the overall design, and since they have made Quicken Mac more like the interface of Quicken Windows, the developers are not likely to now switch to an all-different design. Working from that assumption, then, is what leads me to say there needs to some other visual way of seeing one's open windows, particularly when relaunching the program with windows hidden out of sight. Perhaps some sort of small anchors/tabs on the top, bottom or right side of the main window (somewhat like some of the Adobe applications)? Perhaps an informational dialog on launch to tell you when you have open windows obscured by the main window? 

Anyway, we've drifted way away from the original topic of this post. Reports in windows behind the main window may be the source of the slowness @Punkin described, but the question was about making a year-end copy. So I wanted to note that I have close to 30 years of data in my file and do not experience slowness from the accumulated data. With the modern database in Quicken Mac, the program can handle much more data than the older databases in prior versions of Quicken.

smayer97

...you can close the main window if you wish, making it Quicken 2007-like.

It's nice that you like the single window view (I'm sure many do) but actually, closing the main window does NOT make it QM2007-like because you lose access to many of the components, since those menus do not exist elsewhere. That is part of the problem. Simply pointing out all the things that can be done detracts from identifying the shortcomings.

As mentioned, several components are NOT available in separate windows if one desires (some I mentioned before), e.g. All Transactions view and search, Home, Bills & Income, Scheduled Transactions, Projected Balance graph, Calendars, Payees, QuickFill rules, and so many other components.

All of this breaks from conventional windowing. And macOS provides tools to help bring control over windows,  like tabs and Mission Control.

And all of this relates to the OP, having to do with identifying what might be causing slowness... and the obscuring of windows in an unconventional way is sometimes part of the problem.