Multiple users - same device

Jim Mooree

I chose this category, because it’s the closest one, but not the exact one needed.

My wife and I share an iMac where we both have admin profiles on it.  I have been handling the finances for the better part of our 32 years, but she mentioned she is concerned that she is not familiar / comfort with quicken and if anything happened to me, she would be lost.

I showed her what I do in quicken and how to tell if bills are paid (I have ever paycheck and liability already inputted from now until we retire in five years). 

While I have made sure she has full access to my profile and passwords, is there an easy was to share the quicken file between the two profiles, maybe in the “shared” folder.  Obviously, both profiles can not be used at the same time so both will not be “using” the file at the same time, unless it just being open on my profile when she logs into her profile is seen as “being in use”

jacobs

I can't say with certainty, but I seem to recall people having problems develop with file permissions if they put the Quicken data file in the shared user folder. Hopefully one of the other Quicken Mac experts here will chime in if that's incorrect.

The surefire safe way to do it, although it involves a few more steps, is to set the Quicken backup folder to a folder inside the shared folder. This means every time you quit Quicken, the a backup will be automatically created in that folder. When either of you want to use Quicken, you'd go to the shared folder, drag the backup to your desktop, and double-click it to open the backup file. When you quit Quicken, it will create a new backup in the shared folder, and so on. So there's basically one extra step: dragging a backup to your desktop every time you want to use Quicken. (Okay, two steps: after the backup is created, you'll want to delete the file on your desktop.) And you'll have to get used to not launching Quicken from your Dock, which will open the last used file in your user folder. (You might want to even remove Quicken from the Dock.)

I suppose if you use Quicken 95% of the time, you can always use the on on your desktop, knowing the at he most recent backup is in the shared folder your wife can access -- you'll just need to make sure you aren't continuing to use the same copy on your desktop if she's periodically entering anything by using and replacing a backup file you're not copying to your desktop.