Is there a free version of Quicken 2013 for Mac?

JCC555

Is there a free version of Quicken 2013 for Mac as there is for Windows?

Thank you.

smayer97

older versions of Quicken for Mac can be found here:

https://www.quicken.com/support/reinstalling-and-patching-your-quicken-subscription-version-after-your-membership-has-0

The oldest version available is v5.3.0 (2018), subscription-based.

jacobs

There is no such thing as Quicken 2013 for Mac. It never existed.

The legacy Quicken Mac ended with Quicken 2007. (It is not available for free. It won't run on current/recent Mac operating systems.)

There was an interim program called Quicken Essentials for Mac which existed from 2010 until 2014. (It is also not available anywhere and won't run on current/recent Mac operating systems.)

The first release of the re-created modern Quicken Mac was Quicken Mac 2015. It was followed by Quicken Mac 2016 and Quicken Mac 2017. None of those are available for free.

Subscription Quicken Mac (originally called Quicken 2018) began in fall 2017. If you have a paid subscription, you can download and install an older version from the link @smayer97 provided above. But you must have a current subscription. 

In short: there are no free versions of Quicken Mac available. You may be able to find some pre-subscription versions for sale on eBay or other sites.

JCC555

Thank you for such an detailed summary!

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth the free version of Quicken Windows 2013 was the result of a mistake.

There was a bug in the early versions of Quicken Windows 2014 that prevented it from converting data files produced by Quicken 2004 to 2009 (but not from 2010 and beyond).  To help people do the conversion before the fix came out in a patch to Quicken 2014, they put the install for Quicken Windows 2013 up on their website.

Due laziness or whatever, they never removed the install for Quicken 2013.
It has been a boon for Quicken Windows users that wanted manual entry only, since in Quicken 2014 they put in the requirement for a Quicken Id, making Quicken 2013 the last version that is truly completely offline, including the install.

jacobs

Thanks for the back story on that, Chris; I had always wondered why they left a free version available for download for all these years.

Chris_QPW

You're welcome @jacobs.  BTW I think one possible reason that they left it there is because of the "myth" that in some cases you had to go through Quicken 2013 to get a good conversion.

There have been a few of these myths over the years about conversions that I take as more that "instead of testing this all, let's just be safe and say it works this way even if it is more steps or such".

Here is another "myth" from the article:

1. If you're using Quicken 98 - 2003, make sure your data file is current, then back up your file. Close Quicken.

Which implies that the version of Quicken 2004 the supply for doing the conversion (which I believe is a trial period version) that it can only convert Quicken 98 and beyond, but I know for a fact that it can convert Quicken 96 data files, since I have some and from time to time convert them testing various things.

It is true that Quicken 2004 is needed for data files before this point since this is the changeover for a major data file format/file types.

It does amaze me that Quicken Inc has kept these around for the conversions of such old data files, but we do get people coming and asking if they can convert these really old data files.  It has been a few years since they dropped it, but they even supplied a version of Quicken to convert data files even older maybe back to the very first Windows versions.  They dropped it because it required being installed on a 32-bit version of Windows because it was a 16-bit program, and almost no one is running a 32-bit Windows anymore.

smayer97

...the version of Quicken 2004 the supply for doing the conversion (which I believe is a trial period version)...

IIRC, some time ago this was confirmed by Quicken to not be a trial version.

Chris_QPW

@smayer97 Interesting.  It has been many years since I tested, so I'm willing to believe that.  I know at one point it was a trial period version though.