New Mac, Updated Quicken, No Joy

Question

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?

MomCatM4 · Answer

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.

jacobs · Answer

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 · Answer

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…