Datasheet

Navigating with financial activity centers’

QuickTabs

Quicken arranges all of its features — whistles, bells, or whatever else you

want to call them — into financial activity centers. For example, the Cash Flow

Center, the Investing Center, and the Property & Debt Center are all financial

activity centers. You get the picture. Each of these centers gets its own

button. For example, refer to Figure 1-8 for a moment. See the button that’s

labeled Cash Flow Center?

Quicken lists the features within a financial activity center underneath the

financial activity center button. You can collapse and expand this list by

clicking the small button that’s just to the left of the big financial activity

center button. (The small button shows a minus symbol or plus symbol.) You

can also jump to a listed feature by clicking the feature — which Quicken

calls a QuickTab. For example, see the Cash Flow Center button in Figure 1-8?

See the word Checking beneath that button? Checking is a QuickTab, which

you can click to quickly jump to the Checking account.

If you’re still confused, click the buttons and bits of text in the area of the

Quicken window that I’m talking about. You’ll clearly see how things work.

Solving Tricky Setup Problems

I want to quickly go over a handful of annoying setup problems new Quicken

users may encounter. If you have Quicken set up and are ready to roll, skip

this stuff.

Did somebody say Macintosh?

You can use the existing old Quicken files you’re working with a new version

of Quicken. In fact, if the Quicken installation program can find a version of

old Quicken files on your computer, it gives you the option of just skipping all

the Quicken New User Setup stuff. In this case, you just begin using your

existing files. (I mention this point earlier in this chapter, in fact.)

If you’ve been using Quicken for Macintosh, however, you have to export

your data from the Macintosh before you can read it in the Windows version.

And I can think of about a million things more fun to do than exporting

Quicken data from a Mac to Windows. See the section in Chapter 17 on

importing data from an old accounting system for a brief discussion on the

procedure and some suggestions for better ways to spend your time.

Part I: Zen, Quicken, and the Big Picture

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