Quicken for Mac 2007 file limits

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This discussion was created from comments split from: Quicken Quotes Server on the Fritz?.

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  • SaxBro
    SaxBro Member ✭✭
    Dear Fellow QM2007 Users, aside from the stock quotes issue, please be WARNED that once your .qdfm file gets to be around 32+MB or so, it might all of a sudden stop working by saying, "FILE FULL." Unless you manage to remove some old data, stock quotes, etc. via a backup copy, you will be sunk. There are apparently some hard-wired limits to the file size, not at all related to the size of one's hard drive or RAM memory. Beware that even if you lop off some of the last years of a 22 year old file into a separate file (like I did), if you have repeating calendar events and transactions still enabled, that could also cause that backup file to suddenly fill as soon as you open it up as well.

    I've been recently running QM2007 on my Big Sur iMac 27 using a Parallels VM, which has worked pretty well. But especially since the stock quotes just stopped, I finally tried the newer Quicken Premiere and have found it serviceable after making a number of adjustments.

    It actually did a pretty great job of importing my old files, although I still really miss the graphing capabilities, ease of reports, superior stock and portfolio handling of QM2007, etc. though.

    Since Managing Your Money went out of business after I used it from 1988-1997 and couldn't export it into anything else, I started using Quicken in 1998 after grasping that one of the most important criteria for a finance software package is which company will probably be in business the longest. So I hope that Quicken Mac (even the subscription model) sticks around for at least another 20+ years...

    Best wishes to my fellow financial-oriented friends.
  • SaxBro
    SaxBro Member ✭✭
    * using High Sierra on a Parallels VM under Big Sur. There are some operations (like exporting a truncated file) that don't work properly, but luckily I still have some older Macs that I can run QM2007 (& Managing Your Money) natively on, so I resort to them when necessary.
  • dboltson
    dboltson Member ✭✭
    Thanks for the heads-up, Sax! I also had a Quicken data file that corrupted on me once, and, similarly, paring down a backup got me up and running again.

    But my current .qdfm is 47.7 MB . . . So I'm wondering if, rather than a hard and fixed 32 MB file size limit, your calamity might instead have been solely precipitated by those repeating events / transactions that you fingered. (Much like MS Outlook calendars, etc., in which these recurrences stretch out into the infinite, if not bounded by an end date).

    As a longtime QMac 2007 user, one certain limitation I've run up against several times -- though without being able to quantify it -- is the number of simultaneous accounts permitted. My simpleminded workaround, on each occasion, has been to rename an existing account, retaining the old bank name while adding the new one, e.g., "NRL, now NAVY" (for two different credit unions.) In this way I maintain the ability to review bookkeeping of a closed account, while moving on to track transactions at the newer financial institution. [All entered manually, mind you.]

    In any case, keeping this old workhorse alive sure takes work!

    If only there were a worthy successor . . . and one that has legs -- as you sagely point out -- to last us well into the foreseeable future ;-)
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021
    SaxBro said:
    * using High Sierra on a Parallels VM under Big Sur. There are some operations (like exporting a truncated file) that don't work properly, but luckily I still have some older Macs that I can run QM2007 (& Managing Your Money) natively on, so I resort to them when necessary.

    All QM2007 file operations still work just fine in a VM as long as the data file (and backup files) are located on an HFS+ volume/partition. By default, you will likely have an APFS volume but you can easily create one with Disk Utilities.

    See this thread for more info:

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  • kohster
    kohster Member ✭✭
    I ran into the maximum quotes size issue a number of years ago. Dunno when I'm going to hit it again. My current Quicken 2007 data file is a grand total of ~20MB. If you right-click/control-click on the file and select "Show Package Contents" you can see all sorts of interesting things in the internal structure of the package. There's even a connection log file, so I can see the messages from when quotes started failing on 3/4.

    20210304 17:36:47: QFN: Beginning get from http://qw2007.quicken.com/desktop/qw2007/quotes/?version=2006&os=mac&osver=1096&build=f161&country=us&sku=premier&nocompress=1&stk.0=COMS&stk.1=ADPT&stk.2=ALA&stk.3=AMZN&stk.4=AOL&stk.5=AAPL&stk.6=T&stk.7=CMG&stk.8=CSCO&stk.9=KO
    20210304 17:36:49: ***QFN kQFFInished: returns 1560
  • fizzylogic
    fizzylogic Member ✭✭✭
    > @kohster said:
    > I ran into the maximum quotes size issue a number of years ago.

    I was planning to start a new thread on this topic after we run out of issues related to the quote server demise, but I'll mention a couple of things here.

    I haven't experienced this myself, but I read several years ago (probably on these boards) that Q7M has a limit of 3000 quotes per security. Since I had some investments dating back to the 1980s, I immediately did a QIF export of my security prices and dumped it into a spreadsheet to see if I was in danger of hitting the limit. Fortunately, I was nowhere close, nor will I ever be if 3000 is, in fact, a true limit (and the only limit) for quotes.

    Since I am mostly a buy-and-hold-forever type of investor, my security detail graphs would all look like fuzzy caterpillars unless I thinned out the quotes for my long-term holdings. My long-standing practice (even before I knew there were limits) has been to scrub the security detail prices every few months and delete everything except: (1) prices for last trading day of each month, (2) prices for any day in which a dividend is paid and, (3) prices for any day on which there is a transaction (buy, sell, split, spinoff, etc.). These are easily identified on the Security Detail/Transactions tab. For most securities, this will limit the number of quotes to fewer than 30-40 per year, unless you are a frequent trader.

    I just did a prices export to see what it looks like now. My total number of quotes exceeds 13,000 for 171 different securities (most of which I'd forgotten I ever held). So, the average number of quotes per security is under 80 and my worst-case is Dominion Energy (formerly Dominion Resources). This is a dividend reinvestment plan (DRiP) for which my quotes date back to August, 1987. I stopped my monthly purchase of new shares about 25 years ago, but still reinvest the dividends. My total number of quotes for D is just over 500.

    I'm more concerned about the maximum file size mentioned by @SaxBro. My current qdfm file size is 24.3 MB. "Save a copy" only knocks that down to 23.3 MB (and it resets all portfolio & banking registers down to their minimum sizes). I've never made an effort to delete old transactions and adjust opening balances in any of my registers. I've been reluctant to do so, since most of these include transfers between accounts.

    I'd be interested to see what kind of "housekeeping" measures have been successfully used by others to avoid bumping up against transaction/file size limits with Q7M.
  • DanaJ
    DanaJ Member ✭✭
    The hardwired limit is 3275 quotes per security. The last fully updated version of Q2007 cleanly warns you when you reach the limit, without corrupting the file. Hopefully importing QIF quotes will also trigger that warning. 🙏

    I just go back on whichever security has reached the limit and delete all but the last day of the month for a years worth of data. There aren’t any securities or MF’s that I’ve held that long, but since I’m saving the Dow and NASDAQ indices I occasionally need to trim them.
  • fizzylogic
    fizzylogic Member ✭✭✭
    > @DanaJ said:
    > The hardwired limit is 3275 quotes per security.

    Thanks for that. I was going by memory, which doesn't seem to be getting any better with age. At this point, I'm happy to have been in the right neighborhood!

    > @dboltson said:
    > But my current .qdfm is 47.7 MB . . .

    So now the question becomes, does anyone have a healthy .qdfm file larger than that? Is there even such a thing as maximum file size, or are we only limited by other constraints like number of accounts, categories, transactions, etc.?

    And what are those limits? I've seen it suggested on another thread that the transaction limit might be 65,535 (2^16-1), but haven't seen that confirmed anywhere. Also, do both sides of a transfer count as separate transactions? How about splits? Do we even have a way to get an accurate count, besides importing to a new version of Quicken?

    As time marches on, those of us stubbornly clinging to QM7 will no doubt start getting answers the hard way (as many already have), but it would be nice to know where these hard stops are before slamming into them!
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    There have never been any published limits on QM2007 data files. Any info that has been published has been for QWin only. Any limit info for QM2007 has come by anecdotely in the forum and such. The other known limits include:

    - a limit of 2000 symbols for securities
    - file names cannot be more than 32 chars for import/export purposes, e.g QFX, QIF, since QM2007 is based on technology limits in Mac OS from an older era for backward compatibility, and has never been updated.

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  • DanaJ
    DanaJ Member ✭✭
    @fizzylogic My .qdfm file is 72.9 MB.
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    QM2007 has no known limit to file size.

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  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Quicken 2007 definitely has a limit on total transactions; in my last couple years of using it, I ket bumping into "the transaction file is full" messages until I deleted some transactions.

    As noted above, I believe the file size limit is 65,535, or thereabouts, as 65,536 (2^16) is the maximum value of an unsigned 16-bit integer used for addressing. (I had about 65,000 transactions in my Quicken 2007 file that I transferred to modern Quicken Mac last year.) Splits do not add to the transaction count (e.g a transaction with 10 splits counts as one transaction), but transfers do (they are two linked transactions, not a single transaction in two places).
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • fizzylogic
    fizzylogic Member ✭✭✭
    Happy to see the mods split this off to a new thread, as we were drifting pretty far off topic from the quote server issue.

    This would be a good place for Q7M users to share their experiences running up against hard limits in the program. Some of this has already been captured in these forums, but it's all over the place in many different threads and can be difficult to search for. As @smayer97 pointed out, Quicken has never formally published any of this info.

    Some items that would be useful to consolidate here include which limits are "gentle" enough to give a "File Full" message or some other warning, and which ones simply cause a crash or lock-up? How did you recover (able to relaunch program, forced to use an older backup, etc.)?

    What sort of housekeeping are users doing to stay within acceptable limits, and what is your workflow for such actions? Things like deleting oldest transactions and adjusting balances, deleting unneeded stock quotes, consolidating account names (as @dboltson mentions above), etc.

    It would be helpful to include additional info such as your hardware & Mac OS version, Quicken version (16.2.4, or older), whether or not it's running under a VM, etc.

    -fizzy
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    jacobs said:
    Quicken 2007 definitely has a limit on total transactions; in my last couple years of using it, I ket bumping into "the transaction file is full" messages until I deleted some transactions.

    As noted above, I believe the file size limit is 65,535, or thereabouts, as 65,536 (2^16) is the maximum value of an unsigned 16-bit integer used for addressing. (I had about 65,000 transactions in my Quicken 2007 file that I transferred to modern Quicken Mac last year.) Splits do not add to the transaction count (e.g a transaction with 10 splits counts as one transaction), but transfers do (they are two linked transactions, not a single transaction in two places).
    How did you determine the number of transactions in your file, since QM2007 has no built-in file stats?

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  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @fizzylogic  On thing to understand is that there is no such thing as the file overall becoming too big. The original post above by @SaxBro said a file might be full when reaching around 32 MB in size, but I don't think that's correct. Instead, the limitations in Quicken 2007 are in the maximum number of entries in various tables in the database. The databases of this era often required a developer to define the maximum of of a table; in other cases, tables could expand, but only up to a maximum addressable number of records. 

    So this issue I was describing -- "The Transaction File is full" -- dealt specifically with the table that holds transactions. I could hit this limit, and it would not crash/freeze/quit -- it would just site there with the dialog box and refuse to allow the entry I was trying to save to be saved. After deleting just one transaction, I could enter dozens of new security prices, create new accounts or securities or categories -- because those are all different tables in the database. The database doesn't become full; individual files or tables hit their limit.

    In my case, reaching the transaction maximum was the only hard limit I ran into using Quicken 2007 before I migrated to modern Quicken Mac last year. As I noted, I think the limit is 65,535 transactions, or within a few of that. (I don't know if there's a way to get a count of transactions in Quicken 2007; I only know the number because it's easy to see in modern Quicken Mac when you select All Transactions.)

    I could have done a year-end copy to hold my oldest transactions in a separate file while purging them from my live file. But I decided certain 20+ year-old transactions, such as petty cash spending for lunch and snacks wasn't something I needed -- or wanted to labor to re-assemble after migrating to modern Quicken Mac -- so for my needs, deleting the oldest transactions in selected accounts bought me enough time until I could escape Quicken 2007's limits. I would open an account, note the current balance, delete a year's worth of transactions -- other than transfers, because I didn't want to money with multiple  accounts at once -- calculate how much the balance had changed, edit the starting balance, and verify that my current balance was back to its original value. Deleting and confirming deletion of hundreds of transactions at a time was sort of tedious, and I did this probably half a dozen times before I moved on, but it was the simplest way for me to work around the transaction file limit I had run up against. 

    Hope that helps.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • fizzylogic
    fizzylogic Member ✭✭✭
    > @jacobs said:
    > @fizzylogic  On thing to understand is that there is no such thing as the file overall becoming too big. The original post above by @SaxBro said a file might be full when reaching around 32 MB in size, but I don't think that's correct. Instead, the limitations in Quicken 2007 are in the maximum number of entries in various tables in the database. The databases of this era often required a developer to define the maximum of of a table; in other cases, tables could expand, but only up to a maximum addressable number of records. 

    @Jacobs The fact that @dboltson and @Danaj are reporting .qdfm sizes of 47.7 MB and 72.9 MB, respectively, pretty much disproves the idea of a 32 MB file size limitation. This isn't surprising, considering that even back when Q7M was in its prime, a 50 MB, 100 MB, or even 500 MB file wasn't considered unusually large. Limitation based on number of records makes a lot more sense.

    > @jacobs said:
    > In my case, reaching the transaction maximum was the only hard limit I ran into using Quicken 2007 before I migrated to modern Quicken Mac last year. As I noted, I think the limit is 65,535 transactions, or within a few of that. (I don't know if there's a way to get a count of transactions in Quicken 2007; I only know the number because it's easy to see in modern Quicken Mac when you select All Transactions.)

    I don't know how precise my approach was, but here's how I tried to count my number of transactions:
    1. Export "Transactions" to QIF for all accounts and dates
    2. Replace ".qif" with ".txt," copy and paste into a spreadsheet (over 650,000 rows!)
    3. Count the number of cells that begin with "T" and contain a numeric value.
    (I ignored cells containing a numerical value only--these appear to be splits.)

    I ended up with a count of 45,840, which seems about right for a file started in 1994 (except for a few securities for which I fat-fingered in the numbers dating back to 1986).

    > @jacobs said:
    > I could have done a year-end copy to hold my oldest transactions in a separate file while purging them from my live file.

    For those of us who came over from Andrew Tobias' "Managing Your Money," this will sound familiar. MYM's "Start A New Year" function largely automated the process of segregating old data into separate files. Of course this added more work when searching for an old transaction because it often required opening and searching through multiple files. I still use this feature occasionally on my G3 minitower running OS 8.6, so I don't suppose it will be too much of an extra burden when I hit the max transactions limit on Quicken. Thanks, @jacobs, this was very helpful.
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021
    The Year end feature request would be a nice addition to QMac. There is also an Archive function in QWin that would be an alternative addition too, which allows repeatedly moving old transactions into ONE single archive file rather than having multiple "year end" files.

    These IDEA requests can be found here:

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  • fizzylogic
    fizzylogic Member ✭✭✭
    > @SaxBro said:
    >...I finally tried the newer Quicken Premiere and have found it serviceable after making a number of adjustments.
    >
    > It actually did a pretty great job of importing my old files...

    This is something that's been nagging at me for a while. My intent has always been to continue running Q7M until it gasps its last, dying breath. My fear is that when that day comes, there will no longer be a replacement product capable of importing/converting Q7M data, and my bigger fear is that day may be approaching very rapidly.

    I understand that the current version of Quicken for Mac converts Q7M data by sending it up to the Quicken cloud, saying some magic words, then bringing the now-compatible data data file back down. I wouldn't count on Quicken continuing to offer this service forever, though, especially since it involves uploading/downloading from a cloud server. Seeing the plug pulled recently on the Q7 quotes downloader serves as a stark reminder of how this can happen suddenly and without warning.

    Since I make extensive use of Q7M's investing module and nearly 60 memorized reports, I'm not prepared to abandon the old software yet, or to try maintaining old and new via parallel entry of transactions. So, I have the following questions:

    - What is the minimum version of Quicken that can properly convert a Q7M .qdfm file? (Starter?, Deluxe?, Premier?).
    - Is there a version of Quicken somewhere between Q7M and Quicken 2020 that can perform the file conversion internally (without using a cloud server).
    - If so, can it be purchased from Quicken, or is it only available through eBay or 3rd party vendors?

    Quicken.com has "Download Older Versions-2017 and earlier" listed under support options, but I can't get in to see what's there. Selecting the link just takes me to the "Welcome to Your Account" screen. Based on this, I'm guessing you must first purchase a new, subscription version of Quicken to gain access to these downloads.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @fizzylogic  In order to convert a Quicken 2007 database to import into modern Quicken Mac, they needed to use a modified version of Quicken 2007 to export the data. (It's apparently quite a quirky old database that made standardized exporting a challenge.) The the converter for modern Quicken Mac has been, since it came out in 2014, a modified version of Quicken 2007 under the hood. Well, this worked well until macOS Catalina could not longer run any 32-bit applications -- and the converter code, which is the innards of Quicken 2007, is 32-bit code which cannot be turned into a 64-bit application.

    For awhile when Catalina came out, it seemed like it was the end of the road for converting Quicken 2007 files unless you had a pre-Catalina Mac. But someone at Quicken came up with a clever way of uploading a user's Quicken 2007 data file to a server which runs the 32-bit Quicken converter application to export the data, and then return the interim data file to the user's Mac for import into Quicken Mac. So that's the way all conversions now take place; it's quite seamless and works well. your file is not saved in the cloud, and is not part of "Quicken Cloud" that's used by modern Quicken applications, so it's safe as well.

    You're correct that there's no certainty that they will maintain the Quicken 2007 converter indefinitely. They can see how many people still launch Quicken 2007, and I'm sure they'd like to see most of those users eventually upgrade to the current version, so I imagine they'll keep it running as long as practical. But if something in the technology breaks, or they determine that there are too few Quicken 2007 users to maintain the service, it might disappear in the future. (I think they'd announce it if that was going to happen, because it's in their interest to do so; they did tell people in the past that Quicken 2007 connectivity was going away, although things continued to run after when they said it wouldn't.)

    Now to your questions:

    Any version of Quicken Mac can convert a Quicken 2007 data file. (Side note: I always advise against Quicken Starter, since it doesn't do investments, loans, or budgets, and becomes read-only if your subscription lapses. For most people, that's no worth giving up for about a dollar a month more for Quicken Deluxe. Since you do a lot with investments, Starter for certain isn't for you.)

    If you want to buy an old version of Quicken Mac, you could do so, but you'd be giving up a lot. Quicken 2015, 2016 and 2017 used the internal converter; in Quicken 2015 it was part of the program, but in Quicken 2016 and 2017, it was downloaded by the program on demand, so I don't know if either of those would still be able to download the converter and work. Even if one of those old versions does still work to convert Quicken 2007 data, you'd be hobbling yourself with a version of Quicken which is significantly inferior to today's Quicken Mac. There's plenty still missing from Quicken Mac but there have been huge improvements versus the early 2015 and 2016 incarnations of the program. And I expect more improvements for investment savvy users in the future, including improved investment reports. I just don't know why you'd lock yourself into an old version which would likely leave you frustrated with its limitations.

    You asked if you can buy an older version of Quicken Mac from Quicken: no. They have discontinued all support and connectivity functionality for Quicken 2015, 2016 and 2017, and do not sell them or, to my knowledge, make them available. If you really wanted one, you'd have to find someone on eBay or elsewhere with an old copy. And beware that the versions produced while Quicken was part of Intuit probably won't work at all; they'll try to connect to an Intuit server to register and download the latest version, and those servers no longer exist. And I don't think Quicken Support will help you to get the latest version of the discontinued products.

    It might be possible in the future to acquire an older version, like Quicken 2015, install a virtual machine running a pre-Catalina Mac operating system, and use that to convert a Quicken 2007 data file to Quicken 2015 format, and then take that file to the current Quicken Mac to import. But there's a lot of guesswork here about the future. For instance, how long will they leave the Quicken 2015 import software in the current product? Every time they make enhancements that affect the database, they have to go back and update the converter from the old versions of Quicken, and at some point that probably becomes impractical and they'll stop importing every old version of modern Quicken Mac. 

    So while there are various unknowns, I'd recommend one change to your stated goal: "My intent has always been to continue running Q7M until it gasps its last, dying breath." Instead, I think it should be: "My intent is to continue running Q7M until the moment the current Quicken Mac meets my minimum needs."  In other words, the goal shouldn't be to hang onto Quicken 2007 as long as possible, it should be to hang onto it until the first moment you can make the leap satisfactorily to the modern version. and hopefully, that day comes before the "last, dying breath" day comes! ;)
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  • kohster
    kohster Member ✭✭
    I will admit to not having done a huge amount of research on this, but my initial impression was that the upload to the cloud converter was only necessary if you had upgraded to Catalina out from under Quicken 2007 and thus couldn't actually run Quicken 2007 anymore. Assuming that you can avoid this, couldn't you still be running Mojave with Quicken 2007, export your whole Quicken 2007 data file to QIF, and then import that into whatever newer modern version of Quicken Mac that you're running on a new machine or after you upgrade your machine to Catalina or Big Sur or whatever comes after that?
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @kohster  When they originally launched the cloud creator, it was for people on Catalina. But after a short time, they switched it to be the way all conversions worked. So even on Mojave, the converter runs through their cloud server. (But I'm curious: why does it matter how the converter works, so long as it works?)

    As for your second idea, modern Quicken Mac can't create a file from a QIF file exported from Quicken 2007. (There is a limited QIF import for Moneydance and Banktivity files only.) If this worked, the discussion about the converter would be moot.
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  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    jacobs said:
    @kohster  When they originally launched the cloud creator, it was for people on Catalina. But after a short time, they switched it to be the way all conversions worked. So even on Mojave, the converter runs through their cloud server. (But I'm curious: why does it matter how the converter works, so long as it works?)
    ...
    Do you know what specific version of QMac this switch occurred? It is the first I have read about it applying for all conversions, because last I checked (which has been a while now), local conversion was still possible.

    BTW, one reason it matters is for control... if Quicken turns off this feature, at least having whatever the last version (or any version before that) that allows local conversion would still give an upgrade path if you miss the window of opportunity, e.g. some latecomers or holdouts.

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  • fizzylogic
    fizzylogic Member ✭✭✭
    @jacobs Many thanks for this detailed response. Yes, I was aware of the approach used for conversion before it was moved to the cloud. After reading about it several years ago, I always pictured the conversion engine as a miserable, 32-bit wretch that "Modern Quicken" kept chained in its basement, saved from starvation only by the occasional .qdfm morsel offered up by a defeated Q7M user.

    It's not the fear of Quicken having my data on their servers that concerns me. After all, many of us who file electronically are already entrusting our financial info to Intuit, who until recently owned both TurboTax and Quicken. I'm more worried about the possibility that Quicken will at some point shut down the "cloud conversion" feature, leaving no workable alternative for legacy Q7M users who haven't yet made the leap to Modern Quicken. We knew and were warned well in advance that Q7's transaction downloads would be discontinued at some point, but as far as I can tell, the recent demise of the quote server was sudden and unannounced.

    @Jacobs said:
    >I just don't know why you'd lock yourself into an old version which would likely leave you frustrated with its limitations.

    Ah, but that's not my intent at all. I'm only interested in seeing whether an older version of the program can still be registered and has the ability to convert Q7M data internally. It sounds like Quicken 2015 might fill the bill. I don't plan to actually use it, but simply test to make sure it works, then stuff it into the Mojave VM on my Big Sur machine, along with the standby copy of QM7 I'm keeping there as a failsafe against the day when High Sierra is no longer usable. I'd be happy with a version that does nothing more than serve as an intermediary for data transfer between QM7 and some future version of Quicken, if such a thing is needed when I'm ready to make that leap. I figure that Quicken 2027 will be more likely to successfully import data from Q15 than from Q7.

    >I think it should be: "My intent is to continue running Q7M until the moment the current Quicken Mac meets my minimum needs."

    OK, I can't argue with that, but I'm not holding my breath, either. In 2014-15, I participated in the beta program for the new version built on the foundation of Quicken Essentials. Based on the assignments we were given and the feedback we received from the team leaders, it soon became apparent that replicating the functionality of Q7's investment and reporting modules was a very, very low priority compared to making the banking module look and feel more like IOS, and strengthening features like online bill pay and downloading transactions & statements from financial institutions.

    I was disheartened enough by the trends I observed that I dropped out of the program, although in retrospect, I guess I should have stuck around long enough to get my free release copy of the new Quicken. On the other hand, here we are six years later and they still haven't restored some of Quicken Mac's basic functionality from over 20 years ago. I just fired up Quicken Deluxe 98 on OS 8.6 to verify and was surprised at how much of Q7 was already there in the "Classic" version. Even back then, memorized reports could be fully customized, right down to the same "Layout," "Content," and "Organization" tabs.

    > I always advise against Quicken Starter, since it doesn't do investments, loans, or budgets, and becomes read-only if your subscription lapses.

    Exactly the kind of thing I was wondering! I'm thinking about purchasing a Quicken subscription so I can play with it and see how far it's come, especially with the investment module, so that rules out Starter for me, anyway. I also have some loans and rental properties, but I don't download anything from financial institutions. I prefer to enter all my transactions manually, and all of my online and/or automatic bill paying is done directly with each utility or service provider. This being the case, is there any benefit to paying extra for Premier? Also, if a Deluxe or Premier subscription is allowed to lapse, do we lose any functionality, such as ability to download stock quotes?

    Thanks again for this great information. Obviously, there's no point in clinging to Q7 once a more viable, modern alternative is available, but I just haven't seen it yet, either from Quicken or any of their competitors. (And don't get me started on 2D CAD & drafting programs, now that Intaglio seems to have bit the dust!)
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    I do not recall exactly what changed when, but I'm going to amend my previous statement, which was based on what I believe another user previously reported and what I thought I had previously experienced. I just tested with the current Quicken, on a Mac running Mojave; it will still download the local converter program (QuickenFileExchangeUtility.app) if it is not present, and convert locally. I also tried without an Internet connection, and it tried unsuccessfully to download the converter; when I told it to proceed anyway, it told me there was a copy of the converter program on the Mac but warned that it might not be the latest version. (But I needed to restore Internet access to have it validate my Quicken ID.)

    I also tried doing a Quicken 2007 conversion with Quicken 2015, 2016 and 2017. Quicken 2015 worked. With the other two programs, I was unsuccessful, trying with and without an Internet connection; I had issues connecting to Quicken Cloud in Quicken 2016 and Quicken 2017. It might have been issues with my Quicken ID in those programs, but I was unable to log in with the valid Quicken ID I use currently. I don't know if this was due to connected services being discontinued for these programs or some other problem. (I do not have time to do additional testing on another computer.)

    So from my limited testing today, I'm reporting that Quicken 2015 worked, and Quicken Mac worked, on a pre-Catalina Mac. I didn't have success with Quicken 2016 or 2017, but those tests may not be conclusive.


    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021
    Thanks for that set of testing.... did you try with a more current version of QMac too, with your current QID?

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  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    smayer97 said:
    Thanks for that set of testing.... did you try with a more current version of QMac too, with your current QID?
    Yes. Re-read the second sentence of the post above. ;)
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I got confounded by the later references to 2015, 2016, and 2017. Thx for clarifying.

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