can't import to new Quicken for Mac from Quicken 2007

Torino

Just purchased Quicken for Mac Starter. When I attempt to import my data file from Quicken 2007, I get "An error occurred while preparing the file to be imported."

I have tried reindexing the Quicken 2007 file. I currently have no issues using Quicken 2007, so I don't have any reason to think the file is corrupted.

What should I try next, before I give up on Quicken for Mac? Thanks in advance for any ideas.

jacobs

Just to check a few things…

What version of macOS are you running?

And do you have the current/recent version of Quicken Mac (6.4.5 or 6.5.1) installed?

You launch the software, land on the Let's Get Started page, and select that you are starting from a Quicken 2007 data file? And you point to your .qdfm data file from Quicken 2007, and okay that it will connect to Quicken Cloud to covert your data — and then it gives you the error?

Torino

Quicken Mac 6.4.5 is installed. Mac OS on this laptop is 10.14.6.
I launch the software, select the .qdfm file, connect to Quicken Cloud, it shows me the progress bar, everything looks ok, and then I get the error message.
I'll try updating to the newest Quicken and see if that makes a difference.

Torino

Just tried again. No dice.

Quicken Jasmine

Hi @Torino,

Thank you for contacting the community, I am sorry that you are experiencing this issue. In order for the Quicken application to be able to run properly, your Mac Operating System needs to be one of the three most recent ones, which would be Catalina, Big Sur, or Monterey. From what you have said, your Mac is operating on the Mojave system which is not compatible. 

I recommend updating the OS on your Mac and then trying to import the file again. I will also say that going from Quicken 2007 to Quicken 2021 is a big jump so there might be some transparency when uploading the file. However, I hope that this helps with your issue and that everything transfers smoothly. 

Please do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns. 

Thank you, 
Quicken Jasmine

jacobs

Yes, I was afraid of that. They haven't touched the conversion code for years, to the best of my knowledge.

Is the .qdfm data file on your local hard drive on the Mojave laptop?

Unfortunately, there's not much I can think of to do to diagnose what problem it is having with your data file. I have two thoughts moving forward, both depending on whether you have the older Mac which can run Quicken 2007. Since you mentioned that you reindexed the indexes, I'm guessing/hoping you do still have that Mac?

Idea 1: Open Quicken 2007 and use the Save a Copy command. in Quicken 2007, Save a Copy actually recreates a new Quicken 2007 data file record by record, as opposed to a simply Finder Copy. This can sometimes eliminate whatever minor corrupt exists in the file, and the new file will be able to be imported into modern Quicken Mac. If Save a Copy fails with an error, though, it indicates a problem in the Quicken 2007 database which may not be able to be repaired. 

Idea 2: I wonder if we could try installing an older version of modern Quicken Mac, such as Quicken 2016,  to see if it will convert the data file successfully. If you could get the data imported into Quicken 2016, for instance, then updating from there to the current Quicken Mac should be quite easy. If you still have the older Mac, what version of macOS is it running?

jacobs

Oh, another thought. How did you move the Quicken 2007 data file from the old computer to the newer one? Could you try compressing it (in Finder, File > Compress) into a .zip file on the old computer, then moving the .zip file to the new computer, then double-clicking the .zip file to restore it to a .qdfm file. Then try running Quicken Mac again and using this version of the .qdfm file to import. 

(The idea here is that the old Quicken 2007 data file structure can be damaged when moving it from one machine to another. Encasing it in a .zip wrapper for the move protects it from such damage.)

jacobs

And one more question: do you have Time Machine and/or other backups of your Quicken 2007 data file? Even though it might require you to re-enter some of your recent transactions, trying to convert a backup file from a week ago or a month ago might get you over the hump into modern Quicken Mac.

Torino

Quicken Jasmine: Thanks for the response. That's a drag, because the whole point of this is to successfully import this data to new software BEFORE I update the OS. If I update the OS first, I lose access to QM2007. I guess this is what a 30-day trial is for...I could try a different program and see if I can import the data.

jacobs: yes the .qdfm is stored locally on my laptop. I do have several backups but of course I could potentially encounter the same problems with any of those.
Save a Copy sounds like a good idea but sadly...I discovered that I can't, I'm getting the error "unable to erase partly-copied files." I may try messing with the dates etc and seeing if I can get that to work.
Trying to import to an older QM version as a stepping stone sounds like a good idea. Is it possible to download one of those for free?
Note I'm not sure what you mean by asking about an 'older Mac'? I am running QM2007 on Mojave (successfully).

jacobs

Quicken Jasmine said:

Thank you for contacting the community, I am sorry that you are experiencing this issue. In order for the Quicken application to be able to run properly, your Mac Operating System needs to be one of the three most recent ones, which would be Catalina, Big Sur, or Monterey. From what you have said, your Mac is operating on the Mojave system which is not compatible. 

@Quicken Jasmine @Torino It is incorrect that Quicken Mac will not run on Mojave. My primary Mac is still on Mojave, and Quicken Mac runs perfectly well; I use it every day.

Quicken adopted an official policy that releases will run on the current OS and two prior operating systems, but the Quicken Mac software has not changed to discontinue support of Mojave. In fact, the most recent release note for Quicken Mac was the 6.0 release in November 2020, in which it was stated that "Quicken v6.0 requires macOS 10.13 or higher." So High Sierra and later still work, and users have not reported any problems with these operating systems. This can change at any point in the future, as Quicken's commitment is for only the past two operating systems, but currently, that has not been enforced.

jacobs

Torino said:

jacobs: yes the .qdfm is stored locally on my laptop. I do have several backups but of course I could potentially encounter the same problems with any of those.
Save a Copy sounds like a good idea but sadly...I discovered that I can't, I'm getting the error "unable to erase partly-copied files." I may try messing with the dates etc and seeing if I can get that to work.
Trying to import to an older QM version as a stepping stone sounds like a good idea. Is it possible to download one of those for free?
Note I'm not sure what you mean by asking about an 'older Mac'? I am running QM2007 on Mojave (successfully).

Sorry, I thought there was an older Mac running Quicken 2007 and a newer Mac running modern Quicken Mac. But I myself have a Mac running Mojave which runs both Quicken 2007 and modern Quicken Mac, is it should have dawned on me that you have the same. Sorry for that confusion.

If Save A Copy is failing in Quicken 2007, I'm afraid it's telling you that there is corruption in your data file — and that would explain why the import into modern Quicken Mac is also failing. Wait... maybe not. Please do Get Info on your hard drive and tell me if the format is HFS+ or APFS. If it's the latter, then I'm pretty sure Save A Copy won't work, just as automatic Quicken backups don't work on APFS drives. If your drive is APFS, it might be worth creating a small disk partition in HFS+ format, placing the Quicken 2007 app and data file in that partition, and trying to run it to see if you can run Save A Copy to create a "clean" data file. (I can give you some steps on how to do that if you need help with it; it's less daunting than it may sound.)

But maybe before trying all that, try one of your backup files from a few weeks ago to see if it will import into Quicken Mac or if it also fails.

Torino

Yes, it's an APFS drive. Some steps for partitioning would be helpful!

Torino

Hold up!
Before embarking on unearthing backups and/or partitioning, I just tried importing the file one more time for kicks. And it worked! I did absolutely nothing differently. A mystery.
Will now start exploring to see if it actually imported accurately.
Thanks to you for all your help!

jacobs

Wow! That's great. Maybe it was a problem with the Quicken server which uploads and exports the data back to your local Mac. I hope you find everything or nearly everything imported properly.

Torino

Maybe it was the server...who knows. Thanks for all the recs and I hope the thread is useful to others! I'm guessing there will be a wave of people this year who have delayed finding alternatives to QM2007 and are finally having to deal with it.
For the record: I've only been experimenting with QM2021 for a bit, but it looks like my data was imported accurately, and it appears to be running fine so far on Mojave, confirming jacobs' point above. I am going to run both versions for a while before updating my OS and saying goodbye to QM2007, which has served me well.
One complaint about QM2021: no quickreport. I have tried the alternatives and I don't find them as convenient or as fast. I loved that feature. :(

Quicken September

Hello, @Torino!

Thank you for reaching back out to the Community with your update! That is wonderful news! I am very happy to hear that you were able to import your file successfully. I, too, hope that this thread will be useful to others - I suppose we were overthinking a little bit  

Of course, if you run into any other questions or need any additional support, please reach back out as we are always happy to help. Thank you and have a wonderful day!

-Quicken September

garysmith87

Torino said:

Maybe it was the server...who knows. Thanks for all the recs and I hope the thread is useful to others! I'm guessing there will be a wave of people this year who have delayed finding alternatives to QM2007 and are finally having to deal with it.
For the record: I've only been experimenting with QM2021 for a bit, but it looks like my data was imported accurately, and it appears to be running fine so far on Mojave, confirming jacobs' point above. I am going to run both versions for a while before updating my OS and saying goodbye to QM2007, which has served me well.
One complaint about QM2021: no quickreport. I have tried the alternatives and I don't find them as convenient or as fast. I loved that feature.

Close to quickreport...select a transaction in the register.  Right click and select either Report on "Payee" or Report on "Category".

See if that works for you.  

jacobs

Also, the Search functionality was designed to replace a lot of the needs for QuickReport. Select the account or account group you want in the left sidebar, then use the Search field to search for a payee, a category, a memo, an amount…  And you can print the register of found results whenever you need to. It's not quite as versatile as Quicken 2007 QuickReports, but after you use if for a while, you may find you can do all or most of what you need just as quickly.

smayer97

Keep in mind that Search in QMac is very limited in that it finds all transactions that match your search but does not isolate split lines only, so you cannot see only the lines that match, cannot total only applicable lines and cannot print the desired result to a report, among other limitations.

Of course, the built-in "Quick Report" functionality currently requires you to find a transaction that already contains the content you want before you can initiate the report, unlike QM2007.

So this may require an extra step by using the Search to find one transaction then initiate the "Quick Report", but it is the closest you can get ATM.

jacobs

smayer97 said:

Keep in mind that Search in QMac is very limited in that it finds all transactions that match your search but does not isolate split lines only, so you cannot see only the lines that match, cannot total only applicable lines and cannot print the desired result to a report, among other limitations.

This is an instance where the "Report on [category]" can be better than using Search. Search produces results in a register, which can be printed or exported. But because a register shows whole transactions and doesn't parse them apart to only show matching split lines, as you noted, printing the register may not be helpful if you want a total of the category. So that's where generating a report is the better tool: a report on a category will only include the matching split lines of transactions, so the total will be accurate.

smayer97 said:

Of course, the built-in "Quick Report" functionality currently requires you to find a transaction that already contains the content you want before you can initiate the report, unlike QM2007. So this may require an extra step by using the Search to find one transaction then initiate the "Quick Report", but it is the closest you can get ATM.

Not really. The one-click "Report on [category]" or "Report on [payee]" was intended as a quick way to generate such a report if you're already looking at such a transaction. But if you don't want to find one, you can just create a transaction report on a category or payee. And yes, that takes a few more mouse clicks than creating a Quicken 2007 QuickReport, but it's still pretty easy and quick to do. 

But reports also have a shortcoming: one of the Quicken 2007 QuickReports I used most frequently was searching for text in the Memo field, but in Quicken Mac you can't generate a report based on text in the Memo field. 

Between Search and Reports, you can pretty easily get at most data you want in Quicken Mac. But it will take a few enhancements to eliminate the shortcomings noted above. 

smayer97

You can add your VOTE to Report based on keyword of Memo/Notes