Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual

Chapter 17. Exporting and Importing

You probably appreciate the benefits of sharing information among different programs. Maybe you copy bullet points from a Word document for use in a PowerPoint presentation. Or perhaps you’re into downloading stats from MLB.com for an intense weekend of Excel analysis. (Anything to help the team.)

Quicken does the export and import dance, too. You can get data out of Quicken in several ways. For example, you can export a Quicken investment report, and then use Excel’s powerful financial functions to analyze your portfolio. Or you might funnel data to other programs like Investment Account Manager, described on Quicken’s advanced portfolio tools.

On the other hand, Quicken is reluctant to import data. If your financial institutions offer downloadable transactions in the Quicken-friendly OFX (Open Financial Exchange) format, you can pipe those numbers right into Quicken, as Chapter 6 explains. If not, your ability to import data into Quicken is limited. This chapter does show you one fairly straightforward—albeit time-consuming—workaround.

Finally, you might want to transfer data from one Quicken data file to another. If you want to create a new data file to track your parents’ finances, for instance, just export your category list and memorized payees to the new file. This chapter describes all these methods for getting data into and out of Quicken, and the benefits and drawbacks of each one.

Exporting Quicken Data

Quicken is a great personal finance ...