Need a way to halt/cancel a report operation if it's taking too long

wtd60

Quicken Premiere
Version 865.14
Build 27.2.65.14
Windows 11 Home

Sometimes I task Quicken with making a report and I request a report that seems to cover more time than Quicken can handle. This report has been in process for over an hour and I can only stop it by using Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then use Task Manager to kill the Quicken task. As I've killed it in an uncontrolled way, I don't feel comfortable using the existing data file, so I restore it from the most recent backup file and proceed with the report using a smaller time interval. It's hard to predict which reports can handle long time intervals and with can't. In the first case, it's the Report Spending with 'Itemized Categories' and i chose time interval = all dates. It's been running for about an hour and I have no indication of the % progress and I've used task manager to kill Quicken to regain some control.

In the 2nd case, I chose the Report Spending with 'Spending by Category' and it finished its operation within seconds.

Jim_Harman

You can change the default time period for reports by going to Edit > Preferences > Reports and Graphs. I set it to Yearly.

I have a similar problem with the default Register report that is accessed from an account's gear menu > More reports. My main checking account goes back 24 years and has over 9,000 transactions. The report takes a very long time to come up and there is no way to stop it. Unfortunately this report does not honor the default setting.

wtd60

Thanks, I didn't know about the Register/Gear/More Reports option. That could be useful.

The thing is though, that I really do want to export the itemized category report for all time. It's much easier to analyze that data in excel than it is in Quicken. Every once in a while I forget which report is fast and which takes forever and I click on the forever one (itemized transactions). It yields good data if I select only a few years of history. However, I've been a user since Quicken's inception and I have data going back 40+ years. If I get data-greedy and pick a time history that's too long, then I get trapped in the never ending report generation process. I haven't figured out how far back in time I can go before it's trouble. Until Quicken can handle any requested time history, it needs to offer a way to stop, halt, pause the process. (Assuming pause would give me an button to stop or continue). It also needs a progress bar. After an hour of report generation, is it making any progress at all? is it almost done? does it have hours to go? should I assume it's in a never ending loop and kill Quicken with Task manager? If I kill it, then is the data safe or must I restore from backup?

Consider this one or more feature requests:

1. Progress bar
2. 64 bit program (hopefully that would speed up the process)
3. Stop/pause button during report/search processes

Jim_Harman

A progress bar and a way to stop the report generation would certainly be useful.

You must also be careful with Find/replace if your Find will return a large number of results.

Also note that for reports like your second example there is a limit of 250 columns.

q_lurker

I use the preference setting (Edit / Preferences / Reports and graphs) to "Customize report/graph before creating". That means foremost EVERY report I initiate first presents me with the customization settings. Some users might find that onerous. For me, it forces me to think about what time frames, what account/category/security settings etc. I really want at that time. Sometimes, it is one extra click, but not usually.

In your case, you might find that lets you avoid unintended but predictable long creation times.