Running Quicken on BOTH Windows and Mac, ctd questions

Bob. · February 26

OK, just playing for a few minutes and I notice it says I have a Quicken Cloud Account. As mentioned above, not interested in that at all. I believe it was created trying to import the QDF files. Can I delete (or rather RESET) this clearing it and not affect my Windows installation and accounts, etc? This is the kind of thing that concerns me a bit. I do not use Mobile or Web. Please advise….

Bob. · February 26

OK, played a bit more. I REALLY want to like this :) Seriously. Would be great to only use one OS. But each time I look I find other things. So let me get my list of open questions in one post here (no particular order):

As above, the "Quicken Cloud Account" Windows does not show one. Want to be sure I can reset that and close it down for Mac. I am confident it came about from trying to import that QDF.
Any way to get close to my Windows "Dashboard" which is so much more useful?
Cannot find how to enable credit score in sidebar - or elsewhere.
VERY hard to see "open" transactions such as unmatched sent payments in Checking. So much easier in Windows as they have a unique color. Any setting to improve this?
No Update button? No way to update just the account I am looking at like a single credit card account?
Where are Alerts??
I do not see a setting like "delete categories not used in the last year". I think there are several like this in Windows.
Not seeing the password vault. Where?
Where are my Bill and Income Reminders????
And last, for now and hopefully for a while!: My data file is the same name as my Windows file as it imported from QXF. I see I can rename that. I'd like to. And risk to either the Mac or Windows files if I do as i continue to use Windows as primary and continue to test Mac?

I know that's a lot, but Mac is more different than I even expected.

~Bob

Bob. · February 26

OH, and of course what to do about thoe sent payments no correcting balances, of course.

Out for a bit. Will catch back up here later.

Jon · February 26

Regarding the Cloud account - each Quicken Mac file has a corresponding cloud account. If you have Sync turned off on the Mobile, Web & Alerts tab in Settings, and you don't have any e-bills set up under Bills & Income, and you're not using Quicken's Bill Pay service or Online Backup service, then there doesn't seem to be much of anything that gets uploaded.
I'm not familiar with the Dashboard in Quicken Windows. What specifically are you looking for?
Quicken Mac doesn't show credit scores.
I don't have an account where I can send payments from Quicken so can't speak to this.
The button at the top of the sidebar with the circular arrows is the Update button, but it updates all accounts. There's an option on the Accounts menu for "Update Selected Online Account" that will update only the account selected in the sidebar (unless Sync is turned on in Settings in which case the behavior gets more complicated).
Alerts for what?
No such ability in Quicken Mac. There is an option in the Categories window to remove all categories that are totally unused, and you can also Hide categories that you are no longer using so they don't show up when assigning a category to a transaction.
Quicken Mac doesn't have its own password vault like QWin, instead it uses the Keychain which is a secure password vault built into Mac OS.
You can see a list of all Bills and when they are due on the Bills & Income tab, which you can select at the top of the window. You can also create scheduled transactions which you can see in the transaction register of the account that will pay them. You can control how far into the future you see scheduled transactions by clicking the little clock symbol at the upper right corner of the register.
I don't think QuickenMac cares what you name your file. Go ahead and rename it (with Quicken closed, of course) then right click on the file and select Open to get Quicken to recognize the new name.

jacobs · February 26

@Bob. Just a suggestion here… If you react in the moment to everything you find which is different from Quicken Windows, you will be typing a lot of words, in many posts, and ultimately be extremely frustrated. Instead, try to start getting used to how Quicken Mac works, and not compare every detail to Quicken Windows. It takes a while for the brain and fingers to adapt to doing things differently, and longer still for the brain to evaluate that maybe a new way is different but not necessarily worse than an old way.

(EDIT: Sorry, I started typing this before your numbered list above and got interrupted, so I finished and posted this before I saw your list and @Jon's reply.)

BTW, if two line registers is the first thing everyone asks for, give it to them!!! ANY marketing team knows that.

I'll strongly disagree. Users initially react to things which are different and ask for them to work the old way. (I did! 😉) But the developers decided a long time ago that the advantages of the one-line display — UI customizability, performance speed, and time spent coding — outweighed re-creating the old checkbook register metaphor from the 1980s. The one-line display if built extensively on tools built into the graphics frameworks of the Mac operating system, where creating a two-line display would require hard-coding every element of the registers, which would apparently be a major project. With hundreds of feature requests, the developers have to choose wisely about which things to invest time in that will have the biggest bang for the largest number of people. So far, this hasn't risen to that level. That's not to say it won't some day. But they also study how people use the software over time, and I suspect that they have found that most people adapt to the one-line register and come to either like it better or at least find it functionally good enough.

So, as I've said, you need to give yourself time — weeks, not hours — to work with the new interface to see if you like it, you tolerate it, or you truly hate it. But if you always say "but in Quicken Windows, it worked differently" you'll advance your confirmation bias and end up dissatisfied. I can only relate from the time I spend in this forum over many years that there are many former Quicken Windows users who have switched to Quicken Mac and have posted in this forum that they are very happy with the Quicken Mac UI.

the layout and functions of the gui are behind windows. VERY surprising.

Here again, I'll respectfully disagree. When I look at Quicken Windows screens alongside Quicken Mac screens, I find one looks rather dated and one looks like contemporary software. You can guess which one is which for me! 😉 Of course, design is always subjective, and people will disagree about which of two designs they like better. But I have found that most people — Quicken Windows users and Quicken Mac users — agree that the Quicken Mac UI is more modern, clean and up-to-date. Now, that doesn't mean that Quicken Mac has every bell and whistle that you can find in Quicken Windows, which has about two decades more of development behind it. But some will note that it also means that Quicken Mac isn't as bloated with features from 30+ years of development, and has fewer bugs in operation due to having a more modern code base.

Also, I wouldn't disregard the hidden stuff: the underlying database. Quicken Mac is using a modern, industrial strength SQL database which has proven to be rock-solid reliable over the past decade-plus. There is no "Validate" and "Super Validate", and no purging of prior year data in Quicken Mac, because the database is a significant improvement over the much older one used by Quicken Windows. To me, reliability is the number one important feature, which trumps all eye candy of the user interface.

Every credit card with a payment, shown in the register, has not credited the account. And every payment in Checking has not debited chacking, though they are all there. Clear enough to understand the issue?

If I understand correctly, you have scheduled payments in your Quicken Windows. In Quicken Mac, have you created scheduled transactions — not payments, just transactions — to mirror what you have in your Windows file? Or have you not created those scheduled transactions in Quicken Mac, and will wait for them to post to your bank accounts and credit card accounts, when they will download into Quicken Mac. Either approach should work fine.

I was prepared for things like no invoices

Sorry, you lost me on this one. If you have a Business & Personal subscription, Quicken Mac does now have invoicing functionality. It's a newly-added feature which was just released in December, so the developers are still working to refine and add functionality, but it should fit the needs of users who need to generate invoices, track receivables, and apply payments.

Then, and this is big for me, cannot modify the dashboard to anything like the custom one I have in Windows which is where myt banking day starts! I show all my remonders through the next 30 days - critical!!

I don't use Quicken Windows, so I don't know how the functionality here compares. But you can certainly use the Home Dashboard to see your upcoming bills. It's the "Bills & Income" card, and you can set it to Next 30 Days or some other time period.

So in conclusion, I'll return to where I started: slow down and take a deep breath. 😂 Understand that things will look and work differently, and explore with an open mind how to use Quicken Mac. Don't greet every difference with a growl that "that's now how it works in Quicken Windows". Look for information in the Online help, searching this forum, and continuing to post "how do I do…" questions here. Give yourself enough time to truly evaluate whether Quicken Mac can meet your needs. And if you do that, and conclude it isn't for you, then you can stop swimming uphill and bid it farewell; just give yourself a fighting chance. Best wishes!

Chris_QPW · February 26

Since I'm stuck on seeing this thread because of the lack of being able to turn off notifications for a thread, and I posted on it I will certainly echo @jacobs request that you stop posting on every little detail that isn't the same as the Windows version. Most things are either been asked and answered many times in the forum or in the help, and just a little bit of trying things should prove to answer most of your questions.

And I will add a few more things. Yes, people hate change, but if you want to use Quicken Mac, I suggest that you embrace it instead of trying to change it into Quicken Windows. Quicken Mac by design "isn't a clone of Quicken Windows". It was designed to be a Mac product, not a Windows product. Furthermore, part of the rewrite design was "not to make the same mistakes". One of the problems with the old Quicken Mac (and Quicken Windows) is that as complicated/nonstandard features were put into the product it became impossible to maintain without introducing more bugs. You will notice that this statement holds for Quicken Windows, where people both want changes, but dread them at the same time because there isn't confidence, they can be put in without breaking something else.

The two-line register mode is just one example of that decision. This mode requires a custom interface. What's more people complain about the fact that the second line column spacing can't be adjusted, so it isn't all roses either. Another point will be the Downloaded Transactions tab. As in an isolated "receiving area" for downloaded transactions. Not including it was intentional. Quicken Windows had that mode first and then added downloading directly to the register later. Frankly I can use either of these, but one thing that is definitely true is that having both makes everyone's job harder. From the software to the support, to just even talking about the two different modes in this forum. There are definitely more bugs in Quicken Windows because of it. And people keep asking for more and more features in the "Downloaded Transactions tab" that are already supported in the register, so there is a big duplication of work, and the Downloaded Transactions tab "isn't the register" and is harder to add features to it.

The bottom line is, no, the customer isn't always right.

And note that "make it an option" doesn't always solve the problem. Some "options" can have a global impact that goes way beyond what the users see.

Bob. · February 26

Just catching up here. Will take a few minutes. But @jacobs , I agree. Trying to do just that so some of my questions are "where is this" allowing for a different way of doing things. But must say my initial reaction is both that Quicken Mac is anemic and appears to be coded by a different company. I can understand "take this feature set, do it the Mac way, improve where you can" but it doesn't look that way to me. When I managed software products, I would want the user of any platform to at least be productive instantly on another. A family resemblance. Like Word, Excel, Powerpoint. I am not feeling that here. Just one example of how much more fdifficult it is to see in Checking what bills have been sent to schedule and which have cleared. Foolish, in my opinion. Simple things to match breed. But…

Just looked at investing and actually some parts I think are better. But not all.

So I do need to spend more time, though I cannot run both Windows and Mac fully in parallel. Makes evaluation more difficult.

Let me scroll up and read. And thanks all for the comments and help.

Bob. · February 26

@jacobs " There is no "Validate" and "Super Validate", and no purging of prior year data in Quicken Mac, because the database is a significant improvement over the much older one used by Quicken Windows. To me, reliability is the number one important feature, which trumps all eye candy of the user interface"

-Did not even think to look for that. That is great! But, it is not as important to me as losing a home screen where I am much more productive that searching (for now) a half dozen other screens to get the information I seek. Bills and income reminders are first that come to mind. Eye candy is not and has never been my goal. An exaggeration. I look for and appreciate functionality in my interaction with software.

But I truly do not know how to live with this for weeks with Windows in Parallel. I do not even know yet about that cloud file, not have I implemented and online services and can't tell if that will double pay anything.

Anyway..no religious wars. I really do want this to wrk for me. The Mac is soo much faster. Less maintenance. And I have to use it for Adobe apps. But not sure it can be a close enough equivalent here for me. Maybe…

______________________

"In Quicken Mac, have you created scheduled transactions — not payments, just transactions — to mirror what you have in your Windows file? Or have you not created those scheduled transactions in Quicken Mac, and will wait for them to post to your bank accounts and credit card accounts, when they will download into Quicken Mac. Either approach should work fine. "

-I am not sure what you mean about "creating scheduled transactions in Mac". None of these are scheduled. They ALL come from entering a pyment when Windows Bills and Income scrapes a new upcoming bill. And they are tied to remonders that I do not see in Mac. Perhaps you can explain better.

-Have not seen the Invoicing feature yet. Did not jump out at me at all.

-I sent you a screenshot of my Home page. OOPS Sorry. That was Jon. So you can see how much more informative that Bills and Income is and what else I have on that screen. This dashboard pales. And will not brighten after weeks of use :)

" Don't greet every difference with a growl that "that's now how it works in Quicken Windows""

_I don't. It's more like WTF is the equivalent of this in Mac. Very different.

@Chris_QPW

" Most things are either been asked and answered many times in the forum or in the help, and just a little bit of trying things should prove to answer most of your questions."

-I think you know me well enough I am a great researcher. Hell, I would as a Google Answers Researcher for 4 1/2 years. I do search here and everywhere. Think about the questions I have not posted because i found the answers!

So, maybve we can focus on just a couple:

As above, the "Quicken Cloud Account" Windows does not show one. Want to be sure I can reset that and close it down for Mac. I am confident it came about from trying to import that QDF.

I'd really like to clean that up. Or have total confidence there is nothing there nor will it update with anything…
Cannot find how to enable credit score in sidebar - or elsewhere.

This is just a shame it is missing. Was a nice touch.
Where are Alerts??

Truly. Cannot imagine thay are not in the Mac version and/or have no control settings.
Not seeing the password vault. Where?

Can my bank logins truly be going to the Password Chain which is synced among devices? If so, VERY distasteful.

Can we see if we can cross these 4 off my list somehow?

Thanks!

jacobs · February 26

my initial reaction is both that Quicken Mac is anemic…

I don't think it's anemic. But it certainly doesn't have some features, both large and small, of Quicken Windows — most because they haven't gotten to them yet, and some by design.

… and appears to be coded by a different company.

For the most part, it is. 😂 I mean, it's the same company, sharing the same top management, but the development teams are completely separate. Quicken Windows is developed by a team in India; Quicken Mac is developed by a team in California. I don't know the size of the Quicken Windows development team but the Quicken Mac team is quite small. In the early years of the re-write of Quicken Mac, the development team consisted of a literal handful of developers. It's larger now, but not that much. But Quicken, with under 250 employees total, certainly isn't anything like Microsoft having thousands of people working on developing their Office apps.

Clearly, at one point in time, Quicken Management faced the issue of whether to re-write Quicken Mac as a clone of Quicken Windows, and they decided not to. It would have been tough, because Quicken Windows at times leaned heavily on the .Net infrastructure of Windows which didn't exist in macOS. Everything about the architecture is different, from drawing on the screen to printing to memory management. The only real way to build a cross-platform app is to redesign both Windows and Mac programs to use a platform-agnostic core — which would have involved re-writing Quicken Windows as well as Quicken Mac. So instead, they decided to re-create Quicken Mac using native tools and frameworks in macOS, which saved them many thousands of hours of developing their own database or graphics routines. And when they started on the new Quicken Mac, they felt that Mac users wouldn't want a program that looked like a port of a Windows program, and instead wanted something that seemed like it was built for the Mac.

As the Mac development team tackles building new features, they are certainly aware of what's in Quicken Windows, but they are intentionally not trying to replicate what's in Quicken Windows. Some features in Quicken Windows were designed and coded 20 or 30 years ago, and trying to build a new product to specs that old often wouldn't be the best approach.

Anyway, this is all old history now, and there's probably not much value in discussing what they could have or should have done 10 or 15 years ago. 😉

Chris_QPW · February 26

The Windows and Mac cloud accounts are completely separate as shown here, notice the separate tabs:

As for why you have a Quicken Cloud account, that is because it is impossible to have a Quicken Subscription data file, with either Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows. As soon as you create a data file you will have one. The only thing you can control is what features you decide to enable that might use it.

Feature doesn't exist in Quicken Mac. I should have also pointed out that Quicken Mac has always had a smaller group of developers than Quicken Windows even though they do have more developers these days it is still less. And because Quicken Mac was rewritten starting in 2007 and only got to "Essential" by 2010 (which people didn't buy, and stuck with 2007 version), with very little revenue until about 2014 or so Intuit did on and off again development, and because of changes from the Mac OS it had to have a lot of it rewritten at least one more time. Combine all of that with the fact that Quicken Windows development was free to keep adding features while Quicken Mac was playing catch up and you will never see all the same features in Quicken Mac. But there is something that you have not realized yet. Quicken Mac has more modern database, GUI APIs and less bugs. Not to mention Quicken Windows is "feature rich" and "support poor". The number of features in Quicken Windows that don't work properly is quite large.

Jon · February 26

@Bob. Most of the stuff that is on the Home Screen picture you sent me is visible when looking at the dashboard. The only things that jumped out at me as missing in Quicken Mac was the list of accounts showing both current & future balances - you have to pick one or the other for the sidebar. And some of the Alert functionality is not present in Quicken Mac, such as notifying you when an account balance drops below a certain threshold, or scheduling investment transactions.

As for your list of 4 essentials, I already addressed 2 and 4. To reiterate, there is no Credit Score display, and there is no "Password Vault" because Quicken Mac uses the Mac OS Keychain for secure password storage.

Chris_QPW · February 26

I'm going to comment on this one too:

Where are Alerts??

Truly. Cannot imagine thay are not in the Mac version and/or have no control settings.

You know that in all the years I have been following Quicken forums I have seen less than a dozen people ever ask about the alerts. Personally, I have found them to be clunky to setup, and not that useful. But the main reason for remarking on this feature is the fact that it seems to me everyone has the "essential feature(s)" that they are shocked about when they aren't there or don't work right, but when then you see an idea to put that feature in and it gets like 4 votes in 5 years, I don't think the "essential" holds up. Especially when there are much more pressing features that are needed in Quicken Mac and a limited amount of time and people to implement them.

@Jon and @jacobs You follow the Quicken Mac feature request much more closely than I do. How many requests have you seen for this feature? Has anyone even created an idea thread for it?

Jon · February 26

I don't recall much discussion of Alerts in general. There is a recent Product Idea thread to have alerts based on investment prices, but it hasn't gotten much interest. I couldn't find a similar Idea thread for alerts based on banking or credit card account balances.

smayer97 · February 26

First, QXF is the data transfer file between QWin and QMac. QFX is the file format for downloading transactions from FIs, aka Web Connect. The more the features are aligned between the platforms, the more can transfer between the two. And it has gotten very good, based on feedback from some SUs that have performed this conversion extensively.

(BTW, using a Quicken Server for the conversion has nothing to do with QWin being 32-bit. The 32-bit limitation applies to converting from QM2007 to new QMac, which requires a Mac that can run a modified version of QM2007, which is a 32-bit program that cannot run on modern macOS, since Catalina, macOS 10.15, released Oct. 2019 (not to be confused with macOS 15 (Sequoia), current OS), and requires an Intel Mac only. So not sure why a server is needed for QWin to QMac conversion, since it can be done successfully locally, as you discovered.)

As for the cloud QDF file, it is at minimum needed to authenticate your license. It is only used beyond that if you turn on cloud sync, for use with QWeb or QMobile, otherwise it is essentially empty.

Note that transfers do not carry forward reports and scheduled transactions, and myriad other data. That said, because the Business features on QMac are still very new, there are still many gaps. So, it is not clear if data will fully transfer. Some business areas that may still have gaps include addresses, taxes, currency conversion.

Though I have not maintained the following list in years, the following still has a lot of useful hints that tracked the gaps in conversion (see what you can glean from it; there are still many valid points): List of Obstacles and Hindrances for Migrating from QM2007 or QWin to Quicken for Mac

smayer97 · February 26

As for two-line register mode and the Downloaded Transactions tab, although there are many good and valid reasons why they are not included, it does not mean that they are not of significant value.

Unfortunately, for the latter, even though it was one of the top requested IDEA in this forum for many years with several hundred votes, not just from QWin but also QM2007 users, late last year, Quicken did make the decision to not implement this feature. Some of the many reasons I still believe it is really needed still hold, including:

being able to have a different window layout, showing different columns, sorts, etc. for that process that are not necessary outside that process
being able to explore other parts of the account register independently without interfering or interrupting the download, matching and acceptance process
not having the balance of those transactions impact the account register AND REPORTS until matching and acceptance of a transaction is complete. This is especially useful when there are either duplicate or unmatched or even incorrectly matched transactions.
both the automatic categorization and automatic matching processes can NEVER be 100% accurate because there is no way for these to account for all variations. So having a catchment to allow review before acceptance gives full control over the data affecting other already reviewed data AND REPORTS!
when there are large volumes of data being downloaded (whether from a single month or when processing multiple months worth of data--this can happen quite a lot for some), the matching process is far easier to navigate since you do not have ALL the transactions from the register getting in the way. For people who are willing or able to download and reconcile very regularly, this becomes less important. Not all of us have that luxury.
a separate window allows you to stop the process midstream and not lose track of what you are doing more easily... again not mixing in downloaded vs manual or other processed transactions unnecessarily.

These are only highlights. Bottom line, there are many situations to which a separate download window lends itself far better than auto-acceptance and matching, which provides far more control and flexibility over the process and workflow, making the process far more efficient and effective in many situations.

I'd love to see this idea thread resurrected, as it has MANY SIGNIFICANT reasons to still have it (it is currently archived).

smayer97 · February 26

As for the two-line register, its implementation has nothing to do with what cannot be done with such a UI. This is an oft repeated fallacy, because it is possible to have a two-line display with fully adjustable columns for each row (work had already been started back in QM2007 days), and has been implemented in other products. That said, it is true that the current UI implementation is based on stock libraries of code, so there is a valid question of the amount of effort to implement something different.

That said, it is still possible to vote for such an interface, here (currently with 265 votes): Add 2-Line Display

smayer97 · February 26

BTW, one way to run QWin and QMac side by side without a VM is to use Remote Access software (several free options, e.g. NoMachine and Teamviewer) to access Quicken on one computer from the other, or even from mobile devices (see this great article for complete review of many options****):

http://machow2.com/rdp-for-mac/

****Though it is written with Macs in mind, many of the solutions work on Windows too.

Bob. · February 27

Whew! A lot of replies since last night. I'll see if anything I can/should reply to. Have not yet read.

Took a brief look at investments and watch lists last night and hoping I can tweak that more to my taste. Going to research all the Parallels and equivalents today for running Windows on a Mac.

And to whoever had suggested a low power windows computer, not that way for me. My PC has a dock (made for it) and a number of connections from Ethernet for my network to many usb devices. It is not that easy to get a computer just for Quicken Windows. And then, would have a half dozen other programs that really have no equivalent in Mac apps. Dead Pixel tests. Monitors tests (the older automated ones from Eizo), Faststone Capture, etc. And then, no fun having to deal with updates and issues on two platforms. Will see.

And what I have not mentioned is that Quicken is not the only frustration in "trying": To move form Windows to Mac. Adobe Lightroom, even with a fairly good guide on making that move, was a week of frustration getting things to work as expected and desired. Partly because of how Windows and Macs assign paths differently. Still not 100% done with that and that was my main reason for a Mac. Quicken my second. I anticipate M'soft Office will not go easily as well, but more than willing to be surprised.

So some of my frustration is bleed over on the whole process. Got the Mac Dec 23rd. Still finding, installing and configuring apps.

Thanks for the replies all. Off to read….

Bob. · February 27

Comments on new messages:

-Chris - The problem with single line registers is I have to make the enitre app too wide to see as much info on a transaction as I did comfortably in Windows 2 line. And choose to drop some fields so it doesn't get totally out of hand. And, imho which means nothing, they alredy have the code in windows and I would bet folding money some of it is transportable.

If that were the only issue, I would learn to live. And I can site quite a few instances where I do not believe Quicken listens to their customers. The .01 short in Credit Card bills has been going on over a year. Over a year... Can actually cause penalties if it drives paying less than the minimum payment. OK, enough about registers...

-@jacobs Thousands of developers I think is a huge detriment and breaks more than it fixes. There is a sweet spot for a development team. Manageable. Able to spot others errors and issues.

Once again, cosmetics is not my issue. Functionality and how and where to find it is.

-@chris_cpw As mentioned, though using Windows for 20 years with Quicken? I have no Windows Cloud Account. Just the new Mac from a few days ago. The display does not even show the size of the file so not way to even guess how much data it includes.

Where are you seeing th dialog? My Mac is different and I cannot find that in Windows.

"As for why you have a Quicken Cloud account, that is because it is impossible to have a Quicken Subscription data file, with either Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows. As soon as you create a data file you will have one. The only thing you can control is what features you decide to enable that might use it."

I have NONE for Windows. This Mac was created trying to follow QUICKEN's directions to bring over a QDF file using the Cloud.

Back with more…

Bob. · February 27

-@jon The password vault has me concerned. I do not want my banking logins and passwords in a cloud synced Password Choin. Unless I am misunderstanding.

I disagree on the home screen. I think a bit more than that. Still playing with what choices I do have there. But showing what is coming dues and what I have paid is not omitted because of Mac coding, or a more modern interface. I belive it was a poror choice to change that and removes a really valuable piece of functionality.

-@chris_cpw I was also the only person my Internet Host has ever seen using global email filters and they host over a million accounts. I use my tools. I use alerts and have them configured to be helpful for me.

So the fact many people do not use it does not mean it doesn't have value. And it appears in WAS in older versions of Quicken MAc. I found a screenshot or two showing it, but unsure where now.

But if you two are the arbiters of counting votes in a hidden forum 99% of Quicken users will nevver find or visit to ddetermine what features might be a vlaue to teh user base, then this discussion is pointless. It may be any way.

-Hi smayer97 Welcome to the discussion :)

"As for the cloud QDF file, it is at minimum needed to authenticate your license. It is only used beyond that if you turn on cloud sync, for use with QWeb or QMobile, otherwise it is essentially empty."

Then why do I not have one for Windows?

Interesting. Have not looked at Addresses. Cannot tell about recurring since I do not have my view to Bills and Income Reminders.

"As for two-line register mode and the Downloaded Transactions tab, although there are many good and valid reasons why they are not included, it does not mean that they are not of significant value. "

Bingo!

Not sure what you are referring to with "downloaded transcations"?

And how difficult would it have been to color the registers clearing showing what has clear and what is scheduled like this? Surely not a Mac limitation or more modern GUI which seem to be the two most popular excuses :)

Back with more...

Bob. · February 27

_@smayer97 Thanks for joining this thread!

"BTW, one way to run QWin and QMac side by side without a VM is to use Remote Access software (several free options, e.g. NoMachine and Teamviewer) to access Quicken on one computer from the other, or even from mobile devices (see this great article for complete review of many options****): "

I REALLY would like to have one platform. I don't have the energy to keep up with both. And not a fan of Windows 11. And my Mac is so much faster. Though it has issues! Color saturation varies between programs, for one example. But if I could be "content" withQuicken, Office, Adobe on the Mac I could do it.

You might imagine my spreadsheet for making the Win to Mac transition :) Maybe not!

So all, would still like help on how to test if I have all these transactions that have not debited or credited their accounts and I enable Online Services. And what really is going on with the Password Chain.

Bob. · February 27

@Quicken Jasmine Sorry about all the worms I have uncanned running around everyone's screens. But I feel compelled to talk about this process for me. I expected change. I did not expect to lose as manhy features as it appears I must to make this happen. I did not expect instructions to move data from Win to Mac being incorrect and not functioning. You can see for yourself above.

I am not sure how to continue to test safely or what my decision will be on how to continue with which versions of Quicken.

After tonight taking the weekend off so may not be a lot of replies from me after Friday morning until I get back.

Thanks for all the help, explanations, commisserations and even the disagreements.

Jon · February 27

@Bob. Quicken Mac doesn't give you any control over where it stores passwords, it's the Keychain or nothing. And as I understand it, the keychain where Quicken stores its passwords is not synced to iCloud. But you can stop the Keychain from being synced to iCloud. Go to System Settings on your Mac and click on your name at the top of the sidebar. In the "Saved to iCloud" section click the See All button, then click on "Passwords & Keychain". Click the "Sync this Mac" slider to turn it off.

~~BTW, if you don't want your passwords in the cloud make sure you're not using Quicken Connect with any of your accounts and only use Direct Connect.~~ Nevermind, I was working off some bad assumptions about Quicken Connect.

jacobs · February 27

@Bob. As you can see in this discussion, folks like @Chris_QPW, @smayer97 and I can and do easily slip into lots of discussion about history, speculation and debating about what can/can't or should/shouldn't be done. It's fun for broadening knowledge and doing "what if…" musing, but for someone new to Quicken (or new to a different platform), this type of talk can be distracting because what a new user should be focused on is simply "what can be done and how to do it" with the current software.

Maybe it's feasible to create a 2-line register, or to create a secure area to segregate downloaded transactions, or other things, but the key is that these don't exist in Quicken Mac today. (And the developers have not indicate they plan to implement them in the future.) Discussing what could possibly be done in the future should be set aside for a separate, future discussion because what's primarily relevant to you now is how to do things in the current version. 😀

A few replies on specific things…

[Windows 2 line register]: Imho which means nothing, they alredy have the code in windows and I would bet folding money some of it is transportable.

I can pretty much guarantee that's not the case. The Windows and Mac graphics libraries are very, very different. Heck, the old Quicken Mac 2007 registers were 2-lines and very similar to Quicken windows, and none of the code from the old Mac version was portable to the re-written version because the old version was tied to the original Mac OS graphics codebase (QuickDraw) and none of it carried over the the modern macOS graphics rendering software (Quartz). Similarly, Quartz and Windows frameworks like GDI+ are extremely different. Beyond copying the design spec, I don't think any of the actual code would be transportable.

The password vault has me concerned. I do not want my banking logins and passwords in a cloud synced Password Choin. Unless I am misunderstanding.

Yes, I think you are misunderstanding. The Mac's password vault is secure and local, and exists on every Mac. (Previous to the current macOS Sequoia everything was contained in the macOS Keychain; in Sequoia, Apple created a new Passwrds application to manager website passwords, while Keychain remains for more esoteric data like website security certificates. All of this is local to your Mac, unless you want the convenience of having your passwords securely accessible in the cloud, for which you can, optionally, enable iCloud Keychain; it's basically a built-in Mac version of password manager software, similar to 1Password, LastPass and other cloud-based password managers.

As for the cloud QDF file…

Again, I think this is a misunderstanding. Every Quicken subscription data file, Mac or Windows, has an associated Quicken Cloud account. That account is not the same as a QDF file (e.g. a Quicken Windows data file). If Quicken Cloud Sync is turned off in Quicken Mac, there is still an associated Quicken Cloud account for each data file, but it does not contain any oof your transaction data or financial account login credentials. What it's used for is something we don't have much insight into other than it facilitates certain operations which take place online. For instance, I know that in Quicken Mac, the Help > Report a Problem feature where you report a bug to Quicken uses your Quicken Cloud account to validate or transmit what you're submitting. (I only know that because there was at one time a bug where a user couldn't use Report a Problem because he had deleted his active Quicken Cloud account, which was something the programmers hadn't anticipated.)

In any case, the point is that everyone has a Quicken Cloud account, and it does not contain your secure data unless you enable cloud Sync. You can see the cloud account(s) associate with your Quicken ID by going to Settings > Connected Services and clicking the See All Cloud Accounts button. That screen allows you to delete old accounts which may exist from temporary or other abandoned desktop data files. You can also click the Reset button here at any time to completely delete your existing Quicken Cloud account and have it create a new one. This is good to do if you have previously had Sync enabled, and now have it off; reseting the cloud account wipes whatever data was in the prior cloud account and creates the new, minimal cloud account.

[registers]

I'm not sure what you were trying to illustrate with your screen shot above, other than that future transactions have colored lines. In Quicken Mac, future transactions appear above a green separator line; future scheduled transactions are in gray text, which makes them easy to distinguish from non-scheduled manually-entered future transactions.

You can control what future scheduled transactions appear in each register by clicking the little clock icon under the Search box. You can set it to show just the next instance of each scheduled transaction, or all scheduled transactions in the next 7, 14, 30, 60, 90, etc. days. And this is individually configurable for each register, so you can, for example, see next 60 days in your checking account but only next instance in your credit card account.

Meanwhile, the status icons show which transactions are scheduled, downloaded, manually entered, or matched download/manual. If you use them to keep track of which downloaded transactions you have reviewed or need to review, you can optionally clear those icons, one at a time or in mass. (And if you've cleared the status of a transaction but want to review it, you can set the status back to Not Reviewed.)

I'm not sure if there is other functionality you were saying you found missing from Quicken Windows registers, aside from the fact that the 2-line display allows you to show more fields within a narrower window and change the color of the row shading.

Jon · February 27

The status column also has a set of icons for accounts that have Bill Pay enabled showing the status of bill pay transactions. You can see a description of all the different Status column icons here.

I have the Status column and Clr column enabled and displayed next to each other in almost all my account registers - those two columns tell me pretty much everything I need to know about the status of transactions. (The only exception is Cash accounts where I only use the Clr column).

Bob. · February 27

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20478663#Comment_20478663

Confusing. The keychain where Quicken stores is a DIFFERENT keychain???? Woul dbe nice to know, not guess. I am selective about what I put in my Apple keychain.

Bob. · February 27

@jacobs "Yes, I think you are misunderstanding. The Mac's password vault is secure and local, and exists on every Mac. (Previous to the current macOS Sequoia everything was contained in the macOS Keychain; in Sequoia, Apple created a new Passwrds application to manager website passwords, while Keychain remains for more esoteric data like website security certificates. All of this is local to your Mac, unless you want the convenience of having your passwords securely accessible in the cloud, for which you can, optionally, enable iCloud Keychain; it's basically a built-in Mac version of password manager software, similar to 1Password, LastPass and other cloud-based password managers. "

I only knew Passwords APP. I now find Keychain. But I have and only find iCloud for passwords, not keychain. I need more explanation. Shiow me where to enable or disable KEYCHAIN. I am fine with syncing Passwords App.

"Again, I think this is a misunderstanding. Every Quicken subscription data file, Mac or Windows, has an associated Quicken Cloud account. That account is not the same as a QDF file (e.g. a Quicken Windows data file). If Quicken Cloud Sync is turned off in Quicken Mac, there is still an associated Quicken Cloud account for each data file, but it does not contain any oof your transaction data or financial account login credentials."

Of course. Been using for 20 years. But I have no CLOUD FILE for Windows. I DO for MAC. I already told you how it happened. I obviosuly have the same CLOUD ACCOUNT for both. You are misunderstanding and talking about something I am not.

There is more functionality I find ytou do not in registers. No worries. Another subject. I'm tripping over dead horses :)

@jon The Icons are helpful. They have not populated yet as my question on how to test, enable online and not send duplicates of transactions sent to me bank (and credits to my cards) has not been addressed at all.

Jon · February 27

There are multiple keychains, yes. A couple of them are system keychains used by Mac OS to hold things like wifi & bluetooth credentials and internet security certificates, and on my Mac there is a Login keychain where most of the application passwords are stored (including Quicken) as well as an iCloud keychain that has stuff I'd want synced across to my other Apple devices.

You can see for yourself the different keychains, though Mac OS doesn't make it easy anymore. In the Finder go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications and you'll find the Keychain Access app. Run that, confirm on the popup dialog that you want to run Keychain Access and not Passwords, and you can see all the keychains & what is stored in them. Unless I'm mistaken , the "iCloud" keychain is the only one that gets synced (assuming you have that turned on), the other ones are local to your Mac.

Bob. · February 27

Not finding a way to make ALL checking accounts look like my tweaked register. Make all the same under columns does not do it. Same with Credit Cards or other registers. Am I missing that or another decision to remove a feature?

Jon · February 27

They didn't "remove" features; Quicken Mac didn't start out as a clone of Quicken Windows and then they started taking stuff out. They started with a blank slate & have been gradually adding stuff in.

When you are customizing the columns displayed in an account register, at the bottom of the account list you'll see an option to apply those column selections to other accounts of the same type. For example, if I'm selecting the columns in a credit card register there's an option to "Apply to All Credit Card Accounts". But that only applies to the column selection - you'll still have to order and resize the columns in each register individually.

Running Quicken on BOTH Windows and Mac, ctd questions

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