Help! We are being held hostage by Quicken!!!

I used to like Quicken, but each year this program gets bigger, more complicated, and more difficult to use. They charge by the minute to provide tech support and the last time I called them, I paid $50.00 for a surly tech support guy who acted like it was a personal insult to be asked to help, and he wasn't even able to solve my problem. That was $50.00 down the drain!

Now we are in a fix and we have discovered that they do not provide tech support at any price on weekends. Can anyone out there help us?

Here is the problem: My husband was working in Quicken and thought that the register didn't add up the way he remembered it from the day before. Since he had already done some work today, he backed up his current work on three floppy discs, and then got the backups from the day before (which he had stored on the hard drive in "My Documents") and opened them. We don't know how this happened, but when he looked at yesterday's file, it took over the program and overwrote all of his work today. Now the whole program is acting funny and when we try to restore our current file we get an error message saying that the diskettes cannot be read (they are good quality, new diskettes and when he backed up his work he got a message that the files had been successfully backed up). Surely there is a way to access our current check register! Has anyone ever had this problem? Can anyone explain how to fix this?

We are just about fed up with Quicken. Of course we'd like to get our data back, but we would really like to find another computer check register application that is simpler and more reliable than Quicken. Can anyone reccomend a program that is not so bloated and out of control? I cannot go through another generation of Quicken upgrades. I am not running a fortune 500 company - I only want to keep track of my check register. If I could go back to the old DOS based Quicken, I would do it in a heartbeat, but that old fossil will not work with Windows. Thanks for any input you can give.

 

I can't help you with your Quicken problems. Still, I can recommend some other financial programs:

Quicken's primary competitor is MS Money, which varies from $20 to $70, and there's a 60-day trial and Quicken file importing.

http://directory.google.com/Top/Home/Personal_Finance/Software/ -- The relevant Google directory. Has a bunch of software solutions, but many seem to be for Linux.

 

ironically my wife is having nearly the same problem only with another intuit product. QuickBooks 2002. She backs up the files onto a floppy, it prompts success and when she goes to restore the file on her machine it says the files are not valid or something to that extent. I haven't been able to figure out what's up ..

 

Thanks for the input , guys.

"Chicken", I think I have MS Money around here somewhere...it came with the computer, but I never loaded it because I already had Quicken. I always thought it would be just as bad, though, being from a big company. Do you think it is a small and simple application? I really only need a program with a check register, the ability to do the math required to balance it, and possibly the ability to print out checks. There is no way I need all the bells and whistles that are crammed into Quicken.

Kodo, I think Intuit has some serious problems with back ups. Most of my past problems with Quicken have been related to not being able to back up or not being able to restore. If you ask me, that is a pretty serious flaw for an application that controls your finances!!!

 

I have no clue. I've never used either one. I balance my checkbook and do my taxes the old fashioned way.

CheckBook v4.0 might suit your needs, too. That was kinda why I posted the google directory link. Here's another directory link. Really, if you don't like Quicken because of the interface and complexity, you're going to have to do some reasearch and find a better program. I can't tell you what you're going to like, and there aren't a whole lot of options. Quicken and MS Money are the major players, and I suggested MS Money because you can demo it and use your Quicken data files. If you want simple, you should probably look at the Standard $20 version.

Anything else is going to be hard to find, and a lot of it will be for Mac OS X or Linux... because you probably can't get Quicken or MS Money on those platforms.

 

I use MS Money daily....

small.... simple.. BAH!
nope it is huge... but very powerful...
give yourself several hours on first install to really set it up well...
after that, I do like it...
great budgeting... keeps track of investments...bill reminders, etc. etc.
Very powerful......

if all you want is something small M$ Money isn't it...
if you want a full featured program that is really powerfull..
than I much prefer M$ over quicken


sorry this isn't an answer about the backup... do you have a second computer somewhere that you could install Qucken on and try to restore the backup?
My normal answer would be to re-install Quicken but I am not sure in this case it that would create more problems...

 

No, I don't think I want anything big and powerful, but I may not have the last word on that issue. My DH kinda likes the ability to pay bills online and wants something equal in scope to Quicken. Personally, I hate all that stuff and will continue my search for a kinder, simpler check register. I actually started researching Chicken's links last night and found Checkbook v4.0. It sounds like just what I want - now I have to convince DH that he wants it too!

BTW, I posted this same question on another message board and someone suggested that I perform the scanreg /restore function to see if that gets our data back the way it was. It can't hurt.