How to use Quicken on more than one laptop

Question

I have Quicken on a Mac pointing to a file on iCloud.  I want to access my Quicken data from more than one Mac, though it does not have to be at the same time.

I saw discussion from 2021 (2 years ago) recommending against having the data in iCloud (it would get corrupted) and suggesting it's impossible to access it from more than one machine.

Has this changed?  What's the latest?  Please advise.

Thank you.

jacobs · Answer

As @Jon says, you definitely shouldn't have your live data file on iCloud; you should always run Quicken with a data file on your local drive. What I'd do is create a .zip (File > Compress) copy of your data file after each time you quit Quickien, and move that to iCloud. Then, when you're ready to use Quicken next, just copy the .zip file from iCloud to your desktop, double-click it do decompress it, and off you go. It's an extra step at startup and shutdown, but after you get into a routine of doing this, it'll only add a few seconds each time.

(Alternatively, you could set your Quicken Backup location to your folder on iCloud, so it automatically backs up to iCloud; the .quickenbackup file is zipped and safe to store on a cloud storage device. Then each time you're ready to use Quicken, you'd copy the .quickenbackup file to your desktop and use that to start Quicken.)

Jon · Answer

Nothing's changed. It's still a bad idea to store your Quicken file on iCloud, even if you're only accessing it from one Mac at a time.

You can still use iCloud to move your Quicken file from one Mac to the other (I do this) just make sure you compress it to a zip file first.