Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual

Appendix B. Quicken Help

As you use Quicken to help reach your dream of becoming a millionaire (or whatever your financial goals are), you’re bound to run into some snags. Finding answers to Quicken questions isn’t always easy, but you’ve got a few avenues to try.

Quicken Help, which you access within the program, is best when you’re looking for step-by-step instructions. But it falls short when you’re trying to learn what Quicken can do and how to apply those capabilities to your present predicament.

Quicken’s Help is renowned for telling you what you already know; for example, “On the Category line, enter a category.” (Gee, thanks.) Meanwhile, it remains obstinately silent on what you don’t, like what to do about duplicate downloaded transactions: “Under most circumstances, your register entry would be recognized and the duplication problem would not occur.” And Quicken 2009’s Help feature doesn’t even have an index, so you can’t scan for topics that sound like what you’re looking for. If you don’t discover the magical search terms you need, you’re out of luck. And searching doesn’t find as many related topics as it used to in previous versions of the program.

Fortunately, the Quicken online forums can be a good source of answers to gnarly problems like how to allocate a refinanced loan to pay off an old mortgage. As you’ll see in this appendix, you can find help in lots of ways—one of which is sure to suit your style.

Help for the Task at Hand

When you’re in the middle of something ...