New Mac, Updated Quicken, No Joy

MomCatM4

I have a new iMac with the M3 chip, running Sonoma 14.1.1. I've downloaded and installed the latest Quicken (7.3.2), but it will not run my Quicken file at all. The error message just says it cannot be opened and suggests that I update to the latest version, which is what I have. Occasionally, it thinks I may have it open on another computer (I don't).

I still have my old iMac with an Intel chip, which is also running Sonoma 14.1.1, but its Quicken is 7.0.1. It opens my Quicken file just fine.

That tells me the file is OK. So what do I need to do to get my new iMac to open the file?

Jon

The latest Quicken has no problem running on an M1 or M2 with Sonoma, so I'd be surprised if it was having a problem with an M3.

Are you able to create a new Quicken file, or does that generate an error message also?

Another thing to try: Create a backup file on your old Mac, move that backup to the new Mac & try to restore from it.

RickO

Also try downloading and installing a fresh copy of the Quicken app from your profile on quicken.com

One more thought though… normally when you try to open a file that's created/running on an older version of Quicken (7.0.1) in a newer version (7.3.2), the program automatically updates the file's database for the newer version. It seems like this may be where it's getting stuck. You may need to update your old iMac's version of Quicken to 7.3.2 before moving the file to the new iMac.

But try Jon's suggestions first. And as Jon suggests, never move the Quicken file itself between computers. Always move a backup file, or a zipped copy, then restore from backup or unzip. Doing otherwise can introduce permissions errors that make the file unreadable.

MomCatM4

I did a fresh download and reinstall of Quicken, even though I already had a new install with my new computer (I didn't migrated anything from my old computer—I like fresh installs of my apps). For the Quicken file itself, I had been using one that was in Dropbox, and for some reason, files aren't syncing across the board (that's an issue for which I need to deal with Dropbox). So I put a copy of the file on my Desktop. It opened up like a champ—and it's a copy of the one in Dropbox, but sits locally. So I think this is a possible Dropbox issue. For the time being, I'm just going to run the file from the Desktop and save a backup to Dropbox (that doesn't seem to be an issue).

Thank you both for your suggestions. It helped and I'm back up and running with my records going back to 1991…

jacobs

It is not supported, and strongly not advised, to have your live Quicken data file on Dropbox. The way it syncs pieces of files between cloud and desktop isn't good for a database program which can update records throughout the data file. You can have your automated backups go to Dropbox, or you can create a .zip copy of your live data file (File > Compress in the Finder) and move that .zip file to Dropbox, but you should not have your live data file there or weird things can happen — as you discovered! 😉

MomCatM4

I've actually been doing it that way for years, but once burnt, twice shy! I'll just make sure I have good backups in case it gets weird on me again.