Emergency transfer from old to new computer

Question

My old computer died unexpectedly.  My backups were on the computer -- I know, duh.  I have Quicken on my phone and I understand that is a mirrow of what was on my PC.  I now have a new PC.  Can I use that "mirror" to download previous transactions to my new PC?

splasher · Answer

You say your computer died, was it the hard drives in it that died?  Take it to a reputable computer shop (if you don't feel capable of doing it yourself) and have the hard drives removed and their contents copied to some other media or put in a hard drive enclosure that will hook up to your computer via USB.

Dead is not necessarily a total computer issue, some pieces like the hard drives may still be functional.

Boatnmaniac · Answer

Sorry, but you won't be able to recover your data that way.

First, what is in Quicken Mobile is just a subset of the data that is in the desktop data file so even if it were possible you would be missing a lot of data in your new data file.

But the main issue is that each Quicken data file has it's own unique Cloud Account ID where data from the data file is saved for Quicken Mobile (and Web) to access once you have enabled Sync. And when you make changes in Mobile it will save those changes in that same Cloud Account which in turn will get synced back to the desktop data file.  It is not possible to create a new data file with that same unique Cloud Account ID….it will instead have it's own unique Cloud Account ID.  So, the data from your existing Cloud Account cannot be linked to your new data file.

Chris_QPW · Answer

What is on your phone isn't a mirror of what is in Quicken Desktop data file.  It is just a partial copy of it for use with Mobile/Web.  It isn't a backup.  And there isn't any "restore from Mobile/Web" functionality.  Each data file has a unique Id that ties it to the Quicken Cloud dataset (the partial copy) that Mobile/Web are the "GUIs" for.  That unique Id is what connects the Quicken Desktop data file to the Quicken Cloud dataset.  Creating a new data file is like creating a email address and expecting it to connect to your old email address and download the data.

The best thing I can suggest is first recover as much as possible by just setting up your accounts again for downloading transactions and see how much that gives you.  Also check for filling in past transactions using Web Connect/QFX file(s) from your financial institution(s) if they provide them.  Past that Quicken Mobile/Web (at least the Web) can export transactions in CSV format, which might be used to fill in past transactions, but Quicken doesn't support importing CSV files they will have to be converted to QIF files to be imported.  You can do that with my free program ImportQIF.  You can get that on my website:

https://www.quicknperlwiz.com/