Datasheet

Part I: Zen, Quicken, and the Big Picture

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 if you’re working with a new ver-

sion 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 Express 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 ver-

sion. And I can think of about a million things more fun to do than export-

ing 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.

The mysterious case of the missing

Quicken data files

If Quicken doesn’t find the old files, you need to open the specific files. But

if you have this problem, you should be able to solve it yourself. What has

happened, if you find yourself in this boat, is that you’ve moved or messed

around with the Quicken files with some other program, such as Windows.

If you did that, presumably you had a reason. And more to the point, you

should know where you put the files.

Migrating from Microsoft Money

Suppose that you’re moving from Microsoft Money to Quicken. The question

of the hour is this: Can you reuse your old or existing Money files in Quicken?

The answer is, “Yes, sort of.”

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