Problems with Importing CSV Files into Q Mac

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: importing csv.

dcwriter

I'm in the same boat as the OP: I'm trying to import historical checking account entries that I hand-entered into Excel into a specific Quicken account in Quicken 2016 for Mac. To simplify things and make it as easy as possible to do so I saved the entries from Excel to .CSV file which every app can read, it's not proprietary, it's extremely easy and intuitive to match up the columns (i.e. date is column A, Payee is column B, Amount is column C and so on) as long as the simple capability is included. But it doesn't seem to be included which is kind of astounding and I don't actually believe the business reason behind it being omitted. Doesnt fly for me.

What's truly upsetting though is the community's responses to this reasonable request which are not only defensive and vaguely hostile but indicate this community's strengths aren't in IT but lie elsewhere, yet they feel compelled to give IT advice anyway! [Removed - Disruptive]

Perry Smith

Someday I may get the urge to write something that generates OFX or QFX.  I think QFX is identical to OFX except for one additional field to uniquely identify the account but I honestly haven't invested much time in it.  The reason is because my real long term plan is to write from the ground up a Quicken / QuickBooks replacement and be done with it.

On a practical short term suggestion: I would search around for something, anything, that generates OFX and then see if it could be easily modified to start from a spreadsheet or CSV file or some other easily generated file.  There are rather huge cumbersome libraries for generating OFX.  I've not toyed with them. Again... could easily be easier to start that from scratch as well.  The main difficulty involved would be staying around through all the OFX documentation.

jacobs

@dcwriter All people can tell you is that Quicken doesn't import .csv transaction files. The 'why' is likely complex, and relates to business decisions more than technical limitations, but the bottom line is that Quicken doesn't do this. Hopefully you don't find that defensive or hostile. 

There are third party programs on the market which convert csv files to QFX files which Quicken can import. They rely on a trick which cheats Quicken's business practices, which is why Quicken won't tell you to do this — but if you need such a solution, you can find one which a quick Google search.