How can I export my budgeted amounts and my actual amounts?

Question

In the Annual View, I can show budgeted amounts only, and see budgeted amounts for all categories and all months, or I can show actual amounts only, and see actual amounts for all categories and all months. I see that I could print a rather cumbersome report showing three columns for each month (actual, budgeted, and difference), but I'd really like to get this information separately and preferably export it to Excel. I could do a rather clumsy approach to get the information separately by taking a series of screen shots. As it is, Quicken is packaging the information too closely within the application. I want to view and manipulate the information outside of Quicken. How can I do that?

Tom Auer · Answer

Yes, and thank you for being snarky. The purpose of Quicken is to encourage users to get a better understanding of their own finances, either using the program on its own or in conjunction with other resources, such as financial services company web sites or free-standing spreadsheet applications. Quicken is a better application to the extent that it plays well with other resources, and I know that Quicken spends a fair amount of money ensuring smooth downloads from many vendors' web sites. Many Quicken users will have access to Excel, but not necessarily strong skills in Excel.

NotACPA · Answer

Deleting columns is "unnecessarily difficult"???

Tom Auer · Answer

I see the option to export to Excel in the Reports section. While I'm perfectly capable of manipulating columns in Excel, I find that a bit disappointing, as it makes it unnecessarily difficult for users to do their own analysis outside of the application.