Export Investment account to Import in a different Quicken file

jhg

I have an old Quicken file covering years 1991-2020. Due to some significant life changes I started a new Quicken file in 2020, with the intention of using the old file only to track some investment accounts.

I now wish to move a couple of investment accounts from the old file to the new one, and hopefully retain lots and cost basis.

I found a forum post from early 2024 providing one possible way: (1) Make a copy of the old file; (2) Delete all accounts except the ones I want to transfer; (3) export the result to .qxf; (4) import the .qxf to the new file.

The problem here is that over the course of 30 years the old file has accumulated over 200 accounts, most of which have zero balances and are hidden (think old assets, bank accounts, credit cards, etc) and deleting everything except the 2 accounts I want to transfer is going to take a very long time.

Is there a simple way to accomplish what I need, which is:

• Export 2 investment accounts with lots and cost basis
• Import those 2 accounts into a different Quicken file

Can this be accomplished with the QIF export format? I've exported the three files (2 investment accounts plus a cash account linked with one of the investment accounts) but it's not clear how they can be imported "together". Is it possible to merge the three files, possibly with some adjustment?

Quicken Kristina

Hello @jhg,

Thank you for coming to the Community with this question. According to our help article on working with QXF, it isn't designed for exporting/importing investment accounts, and it's recommended that you use QIF instead.

For information on exporting to QIF, please see this help article: https://info.quicken.com/win/export-data-from-quicken#ExportingdatafromQuicken-ExportfinancialdatatoaQIFfile .

Note - QIF gives you the option to export all accounts, or export one account, but doesn't give any other options. To export two investment accounts, you would need to create two QIF files; one for each account.

For information on importing QIF files, please see this article: https://info.quicken.com/win/why-can-t-i-import-data-from-a-qif-file-into-a-ban

I hope this helps!

jhg

Thanks for the reply, but that's all very generic information. After examining some exported QIF files I am seeing that I will need to do some serious restructuring of the data (I'm a software engineer).

Is there an official document describing the QIF format? I've found a few online but they are incomplete and missing quite a bit of detail about the semantics of a QIF file.

Is there anything more complete?

Boatnmaniac

@jhg - "Generic"? Not sure what you mean by that. If you are looking for detail into the specifics of how Quicken formats QIF files so they can be imported into another Quicken data file I don't think you will ever find that. And I seriously doubt that anyone from Quicken is ever going to provide you any insight into that.

Instead, why not just follow the instructions and prompts provided by Quicken when you try exporting from your old data file and then let Quicken do it's thing. When Quicken is done pulling the data it will export it in a QIF file that is compatible with Quicken importing which will be saved to your hard drive. Then you can import that file directly into your primary Quicken data file. As my wife, likes to say, it's all pretty easy-breazy.

If you are uncomfortable with how this QIF file import process might affect your primary data file, just back it up before you do the import. Then if you don't like the results you can simply restore that backed up data file.

jhg

Sigh…

The old and new Quicken files are totally different universes. I've looked at what gets exported and it's not pretty. It includes ALL accounts and All securities. Importing this without some cleanup will pollute the new file with 30 years of accumulated — and no longer meaningful — detritus.

So yes, there are use cases for massaging QIF to include only what you want. It's a shame Intuit doesn't recognize the life changes that cause these problems. If you must know: Married 27 years — Widowed — Remarried after 5 years — Merged finances, at which point I started a new joint Quicken file. The only prior data that remains meaningful now is two investment accounts in the old file, which I'd now like to merge into the new file without losing lots and cost basis.

mshiggins

You can choose an account to export QIF for. Since you have two investment accounts you want to transfer, you’ll need to do two exports, one for each account.

When you try the import, I recommend you only import one or two transactions from the QIF as a pre-test. If those few imported transactions look good, import the rest. Of course, back up before making any significant changes to your data file.

Boatnmaniac

@jhg - Sorry to hear of the loss of your 1st wife. I can't imagine what that was like for you. Glad to hear that you've been able to make a new life with another love.

I think you have confused QXF with QIF when it comes to exporting. QXF exports the entire data file (i.e., all accounts) which would create quite an issue for you. But as @mshiggins stated, QIF exports 1 account per export file so you can select just those two accounts (2 separate exports) that you want exported.

One other comment: In the file you want to import the accounts data to into you will need to first add the manual offline accounts. During the QIF file import process you will need to select which account to import the data into.