Can a Quicken Mac file be _completely_ disconnected from the cloud?

yobyot

I have two Macs. Mac A is where I have the "production" version of my Quicken file. Mac B (a MBP) is where I want to restore the latest copy of the file backed up from Mac A so I can view and report on it.

Every time I do this (restore on Mac B and view), when I return to Mac A, I get a dialog that tells me it's an older file and I can "take it offline" or reset it. In either case, chaos ensues. Taking it offline doesn't work and resetting it loses download capabilities for some (but not all accounts).

I've tried setting up two different cloud accounts but even when I rename one of them, the file that's been restored on Mac B still "gets ahead" somehow of the file on Mac A.

How can I use a read-only restore of a Mac file on a second computer without messing with the cloud, which is turned off (it's never worked right in my decades of using the Windows version and is much worse in the Mac version).

yobyot

Thanks, @RickO. Said another way, even with subscription not limiting the number of Macs one can use Quicken on, you can only have one cloud account and the design is so poor that you cannot associate different files with different cloud accounts. I was on the Windows version for decades (until M1 made Windows virtualization largely impossible) and thought I'd get something better with the Mac version.

Big mistake.

yobyot

Suppose Mac A’s file is named A and Mac B’s file is named B. Then on Mac B you restore A into B. The issues happen. This means that the cloud account follows the file _even when it’s restored into a differently file with a different name._

Brain dead.

yobyot

In my case, I restore A in to B, meaning that the restored file has a new name: B.

The fact that a restored file retains the same even when the filename changes _is_ the design flaw.

yobyot

Thanks for all the effort and explanation, @RickO. But this clearly is _not_ a useful or even sustainable workaround. The bottom line is, unlike almost any other app I can think of, backups of Quicken data are tied to the machine on which they were created.

This is brain-dead beyond belief.

yobyot

Forgot to mention: had an email exchange with the Quicken product manager who stopped responding as soon as this was made clear. The dev team has clearly circled its wagons around this design and they are apparently sticking with it no matter how insane it is shown to be in everyday use.