Downloading institution Transactions directly to Quicken Classic (Mac)

SkFalcon

Recently I attempted to download transactions from an existing bank account to my Desktop version of Quicken (Mac). I downloaded the Web Connect .qfx file only to find a Message indicating…

Message: Cloud account not found. Quicken cannot find a corresponding cloud account.  Click “set up a new cloud account” to resolve this issue. You should reconnect your bank accounts if necessary after setup is complete.

Comment: I have no desire to set up an Cloud account to manage my finances on the internet via an cloud/ iCloud account (nor access Quicken via the phone app, or through a Quicken web account). It's bad enough that I receive periodic notices that my user name/ password of selected company web accounts have been compromised (by hackers), with offerings for monitoring for only 2 years.

Question: Can such transactions be downloaded directly to Quicken for Mac, without setting up a cloud account? Or am I missing something (from a long time Quicken user)

Comment: Based on this Message, it would appear that Quicken is moving the application away from Desktop installation to a Web Based product🤨.

Jon

The cloud account they're talking about here isn't trying to move you to a cloud-based product. While Quicken does offer one - Quicken Simplifi - there's no way to migrate your Quicken desktop data to it. And if you don't turn on Cloud Sync it doesn't upload your Quicken accounts to the cloud at all AFAIK; I think without Cloud Sync it's primarily used for tracking bill pay and e-bills if you have any. I'm not sure how you managed to not have a cloud account for your Quicken file - when I create a new Quicken file it creates the corresponding cloud account automatically.

jacobs

As @Jon said, there is no movement from the desktop Quicken Classic to a could-based product. They already have a separate cloud-based product: Quicken Simplifi. But Quicken Classic on the desktop is still going strong, and they continue to invest in developing new features, especially for Quicken Mac.

Every Quicken Mac (or Windows) data file has an associated Quicken Cloud account; there's no way to avoid that. If you have Sync turned on, it will include a subset of your data and financial institution connectivity credentials. But if you have Sync turned off — as I do — there is still a Quicken Cloud account which has some identification information to relate the file to your Quicken ID for some functions which take place in the cloud, such as reporting an issue with Help > Report a Problem. Such a cloud account does not have any of your transactions or login credentials (unless you had at one point had Sync turned on).

Go to Quicken Settings > Mobile, Web & Alerts and make sure Sync is set to Off. Then go to Settings > Connected Services and click the Reset button under Cloud Account. This assures you have a fresh, new Quicken Cloud account with no old data. You should now be able to import your .qfx file.