QFM Check register slow

Jon Y

I converted a couple of years ago from QfW to QfM. Mostly it works OK. However, over the last year or so, I've noticed that when I am entering items into the check register it just seems slow. I'll bring up a new transaction and if I just immediately go to entering any information, I'll get a warning ding and I'll realize that the program hasn't populated the blank fields. After waiting a second or two, everything is there and I can enter in the information. Once in the new transaction fields it's all OK. But getting into that spot is delayed. I only mention this as it's seem to have gotten worse in the last year or so. I have plenty of resources on the Mac and am running the latest version of QfM.

jacobs

The most frequent cause for sluggishness is having a report open in another window which is obscured by the main Quicken window. Pull down the Window menu and at the bottom, is the last item Sync errors (grayed out), or is there anything underneath that. If there are any other items at the bottom of the menu, select them one at a time to pull that window to the foreground and close it; repeat until there are no other windows open. You should find Quicken more responsive after closing any open reports.

Jon Y

No, there are no other windows open either in QfM. When QfM is running, it's about the only open program I have. I usually have my Mac mail running as well as Safari, but that's pretty much it. There are no reports running and the Sync error is greyed out and nothing is underneath that item.

jacobs

Okay, thanks for checking that.

I have a data file with nearly 70,000 transactions dating back nearly three decades, and when I enter a transaction and do Command-N to save it and open a new transaction, there is a slight pause before I can enter the date or tab to the Payee field in the new transaction. I would characterize this delay as being about 1/2 to 3/4 second on my several year-old Mac. If that's what you're experiencing and describing, then I guess I'm affirming this is not unusual for people with larger/older data files. I'm sometimes a flash faster than the computer and get the 'ding' you describe, but I'm either not always that fast or have adjusted my brain-to-finger coordination to hesitate that fraction of a second before starting to type in the new transaction. If your delay is as long as two seconds, that sounds unusual to me. 

Jon Y

I'm like you, I've got transactions running back to the early to mid 1990's with about 43000 items. I did a check just now and after I call up a new transaction, it's about 1.5-2 seconds before I am able to do anything in the field. Now, that's not a huge delay, but I've done this for so long and I've built up a lot of muscle memory for this so having to stop before every transaction is kind of a pain. I'd like to blame it on QfM vs QfW, but I don't remember having this on my QfM when I first converted a couple of years ago.

jacobs

@Jon Y Your comment spurred me to fire up my old copy of Quicken 2017 and do a few tests. I had several years fewer transactions at that point, but not enough it should make a huge difference. And I'd confirm that it does feel a bit snappier between transactions in Quicken 2017 than it does in current Quicken Mac. I can't time it precisely, but the time lag in saving one transaction and opening the next might be half as long as it is in current Quicken Mac. For me, that might be half a second difference, but it does feel a little quicker. I'm not sure what's been added over the years which gives Quicken more work to do between transactions, and if there's something they could optimize or do in the background. My guess is that their development project list is so deep with features to add, and because they believe most people download their transactions rather than enter them manually (like I do), that taking time to work on speed optimization for manual entry is not on their radar.

Jon Y

You're probably right. But I do have to say that I've never found QfM to be anywhere near as smooth as QfW. I hesitated for years moving to the Mac version, but finally bit the bullet a couple of years ago. While I have developed muscle memory with QfM, it's never been nearly as smooth as what I could do in QfW. I can enter a transaction probably twice as fast in QfW. I realize that MacOS is not Windows and vice versa. However, from a user point of view, I never understood why Quicken just didn't take QfW functionality and just move it to the Mac. I mean enter is still enter and tab is still tab and so on. The things I miss about register entry in QfM I would not think would be something that the Mac couldn't do. It's like Quicken took a page out of Microsoft's book and when they came out with the QFM version they just had to screw with it just for the sake of screwing with it. Oh well... thanx...

jacobs

Jon Y said:

I never understood why Quicken just didn't take QfW functionality and just move it to the Mac. I mean enter is still enter and tab is still tab and so on.

Yes, but everything under the hood is different, and radically different. The databases are radically different. Memory management is different and has to be rewritten between Windows and Mac. The way to draw everything on the screen is significantly different. The programming languages, environments, frameworks are different. There was, and is, simply no way to "just move it to Mac".

I do think it's possible that Quicken Mac could be made to have more snappy transaction entry and search with some optimization. My guess is that the developers have been — and continue to be — focused on addition features missing from the program rather than tweaking performance. So perhaps in the future…

Jon Y

I get that. I live in both Windows and Mac world as an IT guy. But, as far as I know, there's nothing different on the Mac vs Windows that would force Quicken to rearrange the order of fields in the register. I don't think there's anything that would force one to have to to CMD-N to get a new field as opposed to just popping one up... although I suppose I could be wrong about that. I'm just talking about the basic functionality of the program. My only real complaint, up until this "slowness" issue, has been with just the form that the register takes. I had to relearn entering things and that's the main thing that I do with it. I originally didn't think I was going to like the reconcile feature, but that's turned out to be better than what's in QfW... IMO.

jacobs

Jon Y said:

But, as far as I know, there's nothing different on the Mac vs Windows that would force Quicken to rearrange the order of fields in the register.

The order of the fields? Users don't complain about the order of the fields in Quicken Mac, where it may differ from Quicken Windows. (I've never used Quicken Windows, so I can't compare.) But everything about creating screen elements is done differently. Quicken Mac relies heavily on Apple's Core Graphics framework and Quartz drawing engine. For instance, the registers are the way they are largely because the developers don't have to hand-code every region of the screen; the scrolling list of columnar data with alternately shaded rows is mostly handled by the operating system's tools. (Which s one of the reasons the developers are resistant to building an alternate two-line display like older versions of Quicken, because then they would have to write all the screen code by hand.)

Because of the amount that Quicken Mac uses the underlying macOS to draw screens, windows, panels and panes, it's why Dark Mode is mostly complete (and is released) for Quicken Mac, while it doesn't yet exist in Quicken Windows, which has different parts of the interface developed using different graphics libraries from different decades.

Jon Y said:

I don't think there's anything that would force one to have to to CMD-N to get a new field as opposed to just popping one up... although I suppose I could be wrong about that.

Yes, the product manager has previously explained that it actually is problematic with the SQL database used for Quicken Mac to always create a blank transaction in every account, and to not have that blank transaction mess up queries and reports. It's possible — as is almost anything with sufficient programming effort — and the engineers have considered it and decided against it. I can't locate his post with some of the details about this from several years ago right now, and I don't know if it was in this forum or in a beta discussion forum, but my recollection is that there were technical reasons and recurring support issues which came up from users tripped up by the always-open transaction.

Once you retrain your brain to press Command-N to create new transactions, and Command-N instead of Return to save one transaction and open a blank new one, it's no more work/keystrokes than pressing Return was in older versions. 

Haha, I just found in searching unsuccessfully for the Marcus post I referenced that you and I had this exact same discussion two years ago on this forum!  In that interval, I made my final switch from Quicken 2007 — with an always open transaction — to Quicken Mac, and it took me months, if not a year, to get my eye-brain-hand coordination working in sync with the Quicken Mac interface after 2+ decades of the old. Over time, it became natural, and I'm not hundred by it at all.

You still sound frustrated with the layout of the register, whereas I love it far more than the two-line format I was used to for so many years. I love being able to tweak the fields, the field order and the field widths; I love being able to skim up and down a screen without my eye having to parse that every alternate line has different data. Every now and then, I launch the old Quicken 2007 while helping someone with an issue, and I now find that old, once-familiar interface jarring. Yes, we old dogs needed to learn a few new tricks to get used to the different interface, but now that my brain has adapted, I'm happier for it. You may disagree, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

But I do agree with you that it would be good if they could optimize the program to reduce the lag between saving one transaction and being able to type in a new one.