Multiple iMac Users

hemspa

I use iMac. I have an iMac user account and my wife has a different iMac user account on the same iMac. I've been managing Quicken from my user account but my wife would also like to be able to access Quicken from her own user account. So, I downloaded Quicken to her user account, gave her access to the Quicken file that I've been using for years in Finder "Get Info" by adding her as a user with read write access to the file. She can now see the file in Quicken from her user account (yeah), but I now get a "Let's get started" pop up when I open Quicken from my user account (booo). At the bottom of the "Let's get started" pop up there's a button to open a Quicken file. I press this, select the same file I want to open, and the "Let's get started" pop up comes again. I've gone back and forth and back and forth and have spent probably 6-8 hours trying to figure this out. At this point I just want to be able to use Quicken and access the Quicken file on my own user account and let my wife use my user account, but I can't even do that. I'm frustrated and begging for some assistance from anyone who can help. Thanks,

Paul

hemspa

great follow up Jacob thank you!

John_in_NC

It is not advisable to try to share the data file between users. Quicken sometimes claims it works, but I don't suggest it.

If you can open the file in her user account-great. Immediately choose to Save a Backup, and save one locally. Move that to a remote drive if possible, such as on a flash drive.

I'm not there, and I can't say what the source of your angst is. But, I question if installing Quicken a second time was a source of these issues. If the program is installed (as it is by default) in the main Applications folder, then it is available to all users. There would be no reason to install it again for her. I don't know if doing that mucked things up.

You might have to remove the extraneous copy of Quicken. Then, if Quicken launched correctly in your user account, I would restore that Quicken backup. Hopefully, that should work.

hemspa

Thanks John. So just a follow up on this. I had said I installed Quicken a second time and I misspoke. What I ended up doing which seems to work for us (using same computer) is to create a joint user account on iMac that we both log into. I've moved the Quicken file to a new location that this joint user can access using Quicken. This way my wife an I are both able to use Quicken without going into the others' user account to access.

jacobs

@hemspa Glad to hear you found a workable solution. Just to add a little to what John was saying, the problem comes up because your Quicken data file is actually not just one file. It's a "package" file, which is like a wrapper around other files and folders. (You can see this, if you wish by right-clicking on your Quicken data file and selecting "Show Package Contents" to reveal that there are folders and file inside.) And the problem accessing the data file from different user accounts is that the file permissions for the files and folders inside your data file get in a state where they may not allow one or the other — or either — user to open the file. Your solution sounds like what I was going to suggest as the most foolproof one: have a single Mac User account that you both use to access Quicken.

hemspa

great follow up Jacob thank you!