However sometimes the first field (company name) contains a comma. Which means you usually want to copy the information between the first and third commas. The information you want (ticker and price) is the second and third fields of each line in the file (named "My Portfolio.csv") Google saves (in your downloads directory).
Quicken seems to like each line to end in a space and the file to end in a blank line. I will assume you are running under a Microsoft Windows operating system. It isn't quite in the format Quicken wants but I found it fairly easy to write a little Fortran program to adjust each line.Ī few hints for people wishing to do something similar. An easier way to produce such a file is to set up a Google Finance portfolio with the securities you are interested in and then use the download to spreadsheet function.
This file could be produced in a text editor but since I have 49 prices to update this would be a lot of work. Each line of this file should contain the ticker symbol, price (and optionally date) separated by commas. The program provides a way to update stock prices from a list of quotes in a comma-separated values (CSV) file. I find this utterly unacceptable.įortunately there is a workaround. I briefly considered upgrading but according to reviews on Amazon the current versions of the program don't work unless you are on the internet and have logged into a Quicken server.
This is because of a Quicken policy to discontinue online services after about 3 years to encourage upgrading to the current version of the program. According to Quicken it should have stopped working as of April 20, 2013. Recently the update stock prices function (which downloaded current price quotes and other information for securities in your portfolio) stopped working. I have been using the 2010 Quicken Premier program since 2009 (like cars new versions of the program come out the year before) to track my personal finances.