Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual

Chapter 16. Customizing Quicken

Intuit does its best to make Quicken easy to use, but they can’t please everyone. So, if certain things about the program drive you nuts, don’t despair: You have lots of ways to customize Quicken so that it looks and acts more the way you want.

Quicken’s preferences (called options in some other programs) are the settings that control how Quicken behaves and what it looks like. You can’t control every single aspect of the program, but you can decide things like where the Account Bar appears, what Quicken does when you download transactions, and how often it backs up your data files.

Scattered throughout Quicken are tools that let you control what you see onscreen. The new Setup Center lets you choose the types of personal finance activities that Quicken displays. You can also customize the Account Bar and account registers to show accounts and transactions in different ways. Quicken 2009’s My Pages tab is like your personal financial canvas. You can paint customized views of your finances, such as your net worth, your progress toward savings goals, what activities are coming up, and how well your investments are doing. Finally, for fast access to your favorite features, you can customize the Quicken Tool Bar to execute commands and generate reports with a single click.

This chapter teaches you how to make all these tweaks and more. You may not be able to make Quicken do everything you want, but some of these adjustments are likely just what you’ve been ...