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How to print the contents of an account?

StuSharpe

I just want to print the contents as it appears on the screen. I cannot find a report that does that.

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Accepted answers

StuSharpe

The Transaction report would work if there were a column for "Balance" .

Sherlock

StuSharpe said:

Thank you very much for your replies!
The image below is the way my screen appears for an Account I have highlighted in the All Transactions: Banking column. I was thinking of a report with columns and rows that look like that.
By the way, Mr. Squirrels suggestions work for a report to print. When I paste this report into an Excel spreadsheet, all of the columns become squashed into a single column.
It seems like what I need is this "report" that can be copied to the Clipboard or exported to an Excel file, similar to what you can do with Quicken reports.

If you aren't already, I suggest you import the Excel compatible file exported from Quicken into the spreadsheet program: open the register, press Ctrl + P, select Print..., choose Export to:, select tab-delimited (Excel compatible) disk file and Export.

Jim_Harman

When you print a register using Ctrl-P or File > Print, one of the options is Export.

The secret for getting a usable version in Excel is to choose the ".PRN (123-Compatible)" option, which actually produces a CSV format file.

If you then give the exported file a .CSV extension, you should be able to open the file in Excel without going through Excel's text file import wizard and the columns will line up properly.

All comments

Jim_Harman

By "contents" do you mean the securities held in an investing account or the transactions or the market value or what?

Rocket J Squirrel

CTRL-P generally prints what you are looking at. It works in banking and investing registers as well as reports. You can also find the Print command in the File menu and in each register's "Actions" gear menu.

StuSharpe

Thank you very much for your replies!
The image below is the way my screen appears for an Account I have highlighted in the All Transactions: Banking column. I was thinking of a report with columns and rows that look like that.
By the way, Mr. Squirrels suggestions work for a report to print. When I paste this report into an Excel spreadsheet, all of the columns become squashed into a single column.
It seems like what I need is this "report" that can be copied to the Clipboard or exported to an Excel file, similar to what you can do with Quicken reports.

image.png

StuSharpe

The Transaction report would work if there were a column for "Balance" .

Sherlock

StuSharpe said:

Thank you very much for your replies!
The image below is the way my screen appears for an Account I have highlighted in the All Transactions: Banking column. I was thinking of a report with columns and rows that look like that.
By the way, Mr. Squirrels suggestions work for a report to print. When I paste this report into an Excel spreadsheet, all of the columns become squashed into a single column.
It seems like what I need is this "report" that can be copied to the Clipboard or exported to an Excel file, similar to what you can do with Quicken reports.

Jim_Harman

StuSharpe

Thank you Jim Harman! That worked perfectly! So much appreciated!

Chris_QPW

Jim_Harman said:

When you print a register using Ctrl-P or File > Print, one of the options is Export.

The secret for getting a usable version in Excel is to choose the ".PRN (123-Compatible)" option, which actually produces a CSV format file.

If you then give the exported file a .CSV extension, you should be able to open the file in Excel without going through Excel's text file import wizard and the columns will line up properly.

I really wish that Quicken Inc would change that entry to a .CSV type or add a new one so that it isn't a "secret".

Sherlock

Chris_QPW said:

Jim_Harman said:

When you print a register using Ctrl-P or File > Print, one of the options is Export.

The secret for getting a usable version in Excel is to choose the ".PRN (123-Compatible)" option, which actually produces a CSV format file.

If you then give the exported file a .CSV extension, you should be able to open the file in Excel without going through Excel's text file import wizard and the columns will line up properly.

I really wish that Quicken Inc would change that entry to a .CSV type or add a new one so that it isn't a "secret".

Sounds like there should be an idea submitted for export of in CSV format?

I find the tab-separated file works well as tabs are not embeddable in the data.

I've wondered about the appropriate handling of embedded commas in the PRN format perhaps not being escaped consistent with CSV format.

Jim_Harman

CSV files do not have a standardized format but normally the way to embed commas in the data is to enclose the field in double quotes:

123 Main St.,"Your Town, State"

is the two fields 123 Main St. and Your Town, State

see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values

Chris_QPW

Sherlock said:

Sounds like there should be an idea submitted for export of in CSV format?

There have been several times over the years, but never any action on Intuit's/Quicken Inc's part.
I happen to know that this would be a really simple code change, but...

Chris_QPW

Sherlock said:

I've wondered about the appropriate handling of embedded commas in the PRN format perhaps not being escaped consistent with CSV format.

As @Jim_Harman pointed out there is a standard way to escape "special characters" like the comma. Here is an example from Quicken's own .PRN print.

Chris_QPW

Chris_QPW said:

Sherlock said:

Sounds like there should be an idea submitted for export of in CSV format?

There have been several times over the years, but never any action on Intuit's/Quicken Inc's part.
I happen to know that this would be a really simple code change, but...

BTW when they put in the exporting directly to Excel format I "strongly" pointed out here and in the forum and in the betas that they should fix this, but all I got was silence on the subject.

Sherlock

Jim_Harman said:

CSV files do not have a standardized format but normally the way to embed commas in the data is to enclose the field in double quotes:

123 Main St.,"Your Town, State"

is the two fields 123 Main St. and Your Town, State

see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values

You've missed my point: PRN (123) format is not CSV format. It's possible Quicken's implementation of PRN is CSV compliant but it's also possible it's not. According to Microsoft, PRN (123) is a space-separated format. See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/file-formats-that-are-supported-in-excel-0943ff2c-6014-4e8d-aaea-b83d51d46247

Again, tab-delimiters are safer simply because tabs are never in the Quicken data.

Sherlock

Chris_QPW said:

Chris_QPW said:

Sherlock said:

Sounds like there should be an idea submitted for export of in CSV format?

There have been several times over the years, but never any action on Intuit's/Quicken Inc's part.
I happen to know that this would be a really simple code change, but...

BTW when they put in the exporting directly to Excel format I "strongly" pointed out here and in the forum and in the betas that they should fix this, but all I got was silence on the subject.

Found: Please change the Export to: .PRN selection to .CSV in the Print dialog

Chris_QPW

Microsoft didn't create the .PRN format this is referring to. It is from Lotus, as in Lotus 1-2-3. Even though they didn't call it CSV, that is in fact what it is. And since that program no longer exist there is zero chance it will change. And in fact it shouldn't even be in Quicken with that suffix/name since no one uses Lotus 1-2-3 any more.

Rocket J Squirrel

This leaves the problem of escaping quotes, which Quicken apparently doesn't do when generating the .PRN file. From top to bottom: the generated .PRN file, a piece of my Quicken register, and the Excel result after importing the .PRN file renamed as .CSV.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/j8/z01gphecqbij.png

Sherlock

Chris_QPW said:

Microsoft didn't create the .PRN format this is referring to. It is from Lotus, as in Lotus 1-2-3. Even though they didn't call it CSV, that is in fact what it is. And since that program no longer exist there is zero chance it will change. And in fact it shouldn't even be in Quicken with that suffix/name since no one uses Lotus 1-2-3 any more.

We all agree. Quicken should stop exporting PRN (123) format. No one should be using PRN (123) files anymore.

As I said, it's possible Quicken's implementation of PRN is CSV compliant but it's also possible it's not. I haven't been able to find any documentation on the PRN (123) format other than Microsoft's statement that they expect the PRN file type to be a space-delimited format which possibly explains why you must change Quicken's exported PRN format file type (.PRN) to the CSV file format file (.CSV) to be able to import the file into Excel spreadsheets.

Rocket J Squirrel

I have been confused by this usage of .PRN since the dawn of Quicken. I have always thought .PRN files contain raw, device-dependent instructions for printing any arbitrary type of file. As if the bytes sent to the printer were captured into a file.

A PRN file is a file created using the Print to File checkbox that appears within some Print dialog boxes on Windows. It contains a set of device-specific instructions that a printer, fax machine, or other device uses to print a document. PRN files may contain text or binary content, depending on the device the file was created for.

https://fileinfo.com/extension/prn

Chris_QPW

Sherlock said:
As I said, it's possible Quicken's implementation of PRN is CSV compliant but it's also possible it's not.

Good point, and in fact @Rocket J Squirrel post proves that it isn't.

So the "simple change" isn't as simple as I thought.