Printing budgets... to export CSV crashes

John F Hutton

I'm looking to dump my budget to a CSV file. Searching, I found these steps:

- Open "Planning" → "Budgets" → "Annual view" → "Details"
- File → Print budgets…
- Select "Export to:" CSV file, then Export
- Enter the file location

But as soon as I select the file, I see this for a few moments

then Quicken crashes and the resulting file is 0 bytes.

Any ideas?

John

Boatnmaniac

I got the same results. I also opened the file in Excel and there is absolutely nothing in it.

Then I tried to reopen Quicken it like it was a new installation asking if I wanted to open an existing file or create a new one. When I selected open an existing file I got an error message that the file I'd selected (the one that I'd exported the budget file from) was in use by another program so it could not be opened. Rebooting the laptop resolved that issue but the exported budget file was still empty of data.

I tried printing several other things to CSV…Lifetime Planner, Spending and Portfolio. Portfolio was successful exported but the other two did not export at all (no file found afterward).

I suggest that you let the Quicken Team know about this issue by going to Help > Report a Problem. I will do the same.

BTW, I don't know if this will help you but you should still be able to print the Budget to PDF. I was able to do that.

Snowman

To export a budget into Excel open the planning tab. Then click on Budget Actions on the upper right and select budget reports then print current budget. On this screen look at the Date Range (upper left) and select the date range you want. In the same window then select the Export to Excel button and select the option you want. Once in Excel you can print all or only parts of the budget that you want.

John F Hutton

Hey Snowman -

This works, but as has been reported elsewhere, this does NOT include the BUDGET, ACTUAL, BALANCE options that utilize the rollover options. This would be a perfect way to do it, if a budget that had rollover categories actually put those columns in the budget report tab.

Thanks.

Boatnmaniac -

Thanks for confirming you are seeing the same thing. At least that confirms this is not something that is "only my system". I'll try to report this tomorrow.

(Would be best if the report option Snowman called out simply supported these columns… Hopefully on a future improvement list somewhere).

Thanks.

Snowman

@John F Hutton @boatnmaniac Glad it worked. I tried the rollover option but it was just easier at the end of each month to manually adjust the 6 categories (out of 135) that I would either add the leftovers from the completed month to the next month or subtract the deficit from the completed month for the next month(s).

One other neat thing. If you have setup a Excel spreadsheet with all of the formatting that you want in it you can export from Quicken to a txt file. Then you open the Excel spreadsheet with the formatting and also open the txt file. You can then copy from the txt file into the formatted spreadsheet using the Paste Special option and selecting under paste the "Values" option. This will copy only the values and it leaves the formatting of the spreadsheet intact.

I do this at the end of the month to copy and paste the actual numbers into a "cash flow" spreadsheet that will project out by month if I am will have a surplus or a deficit at the end of the year. It will then project the cash balance based on this for the following four years. At the begining of each year I copy all 12 months of the budget to set up the spreadsheet for the coming year.

It took some work to get the txt file categories to line up with the speedsheet categories but it is a great tool for me.

John F Hutton

@snowman I'm currently using 31 out of 43 categories with rollover. I started budgeting with "envelop" budgeting, so used to doing all my utilities, everything for gifts, travel, etc all as rollover. Used Mvelopes for years, which ran everything as rollovers, where you would have to transfer between envelopes if you wanted to use money allocated to one category for another for whatever reason. Recently moved careers and putting some increased focus on budgeting, so trying to see if Quicken could support this type of budgeting and not there yet.

I would also play some games with a spreadsheet, if I had some way to get the rollover columns into a csv file! :-)

I have filed this as a problem (regardless, the feature should either work or be removed... crashing should not be an option). We'll see where we end up.