Help me get into Quicken 6 from 1997

john.robinson

My mum bought Quicken 6 in 1997. She used it all her life til she died in 2020 - indeed I migrated it from Windows 9x to XP to 7 to 10 and somehow kept it running and activated; mum refused to buy again cos it still did everything she needed!

Now I am in dispute with the lawyers handling her estate and I need into her old computer's copy of Quicken but it is asking for a software registration number. It says her serial number is QW6-R61-191, where do I go to get a software registration number for this 25-year-old software? I already tried asking Intuit (who owned Quicken at the time) but they're washing their hands of it!

volvogirl

You might be in luck.  Do you have her data files?  You can download 2013 Deluxe for free using this how to convert article.  It’s under Converting from Quicken 2004-2009. Click on the blue words Quicken 2013 for Windows in step 3

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-and-when-use-intermediate-version-convert-older-versions-quicken 

But you will have to go though a couple versions to get there.  

FYI - All Quicken versions prior to QW2010 store your data in a series of files all sharing the same filename but with different extensions like - .IDX, .QEL, .QPH & .QDF, and all 4 of those files were rolled into a single-file .QDF in starting in 2010.

john.robinson

I have QDATA .QDB .QEL .QMD .QSD files. No .IDX .QPH .QDF though...

I still have the computer and the software too, it would be so much easier if I just had an activation code.

john.robinson

Unfortunately the article you linked says "It is no longer possible to convert from versions of Quicken older than Quicken 1998; we recommend that you open a new data file in the latest version of Quicken, for stability." And this is Quicken 6 which appears to have files dated 1997.

Greg_the_Geek

I would still try opening the data file with Quicken 2004. You're not going to get an activation code, so you've got nothing to lose.

volvogirl

I found an old note I have to by pass the registration.  Don't know if it still works

How to bypass registration (Quicken for Windows 2014 and older)

If all else fails and you get stuck on a Registration window, you can try the following to bypass registration:

Start or restart Quicken. Do not start a One Step Update or any other download activity.

Press and hold and keep holding both the left CTRL and Shift keys while you click Tools and then One Step Update. When the message “You will no longer be prompted for registration” appears, click OK.

Chris_QPW

Whenever I see something about the registration, I have to ask a few questions to be sure we are on the same page.

1. Is this Quicken US or a foreign version?  (It is the foreign versions that tended to have a registration for installing, even though some US versions went out as sample CDs that also required it).
2. Does the registration come up while installing, or is it later?  These are completely different "animals".  The ones that have a registration for the install can't be bypassed.  The ones that ask for a registration while running Quicken can be bypassed by just clicking cancel.  And the method given by @volvogirl is only used to turn off that prompt completely.

#1 is important since if this is a foreign version the Quicken US (2004) may or may not be able to convert it.

Also, I will tell you that the comment in the article about the conversion is wrong.  It works just fine to convert Quicken 6 (with a date of 1996) files.  I have such old files and the old install for both Quicken 6 and Quicken 2014 and have done this conversion as a test many times.  Note that the Quicken 6 install can only be installed on 32-bit versions of Windows because the installer (but not Quicken itself) is a 16-bit program.  That rule out Windows 11 since it only has a 64-bit version, which can run 32-bit and 64-bit programs.

Jon

john.robinson said:

Unfortunately the article you linked says "It is no longer possible to convert from versions of Quicken older than Quicken 1998; we recommend that you open a new data file in the latest version of Quicken, for stability." And this is Quicken 6 which appears to have files dated 1997.

I will second  @Greg_the_Geek and @Chris_QPW's recommendation to try it anyway. I used the DOS & Windows versions back in the 90s and had some old files dating back to the mid-90s, they definitely pre-dated Quicken 98 based on the file extensions. I was able to follow the process linked to above using Q2004 & Q2013 to update those files to something readable by modern Quicken. Q2004 doesn't work perfectly under Windows 10 but it works well enough to read the old file and write out an updated version.

Edit: I checked my old files and at least one set of files had the QDB/QEL/QMD/QSD extensions like yours, so I have successfully converted those.

Horniwink

This Reg No will work on Quicken 6 8111111147