[Novalug] Quicken .qdf format - Apparently, still proprietary

[Paul D. Bain]

Jay Berkenbilt wrote:

> Jon LaBadie <novalugml at jgcomp.com> wrote:
> 
>> All this talk of GnuCash and KmyMoney got me thinking
>> about my financial records.  They are in a nice ;)
>> proprietary format, several years worth of .qdf files.
>>
>> Sometimes it would be nice to be able to go into one
>> or a series of these backups and extract or chart some
>> of the records,  eg the downward trend of IRA's :( .
>>
>> When I've done a websearch, I've been unable to find any
>> tool other than Quicken itself that can parse these files
>> and extract any data.  And that would certainly be
>> tedious and not automated.
>>
>> Have I missed any programs or file layout descriptions
>> for Quicken's .qdf format?
> 
> It was two or three years ago, but I actually tried to get this
> information from Intuit, and apparently the format of .qdf is a pretty
> closely guarded secret.  I have 14 years worth of financial data in
> Quicken including a record of every stock or mutual fund share I've ever
> bought or sold, down to the individual lots.  It is this, combined with
> the ability to automatically reconcile with my bank without having to go
> to websites and download ofx files, that keeps me in Quicken.  It is the
> *only* exception I have to my rule about not having data that is
> important to me locked up in a proprietary format.  Although you could
> painstakingly export everything to QIF, you would lose A LOT of the
> information in your quicken data files, such as stock price history,
> reconciliation information, and a whole lot of other stuff.  Every few
> years, I take a fresh look at GnuCash or the other free alternatives,
> but I basically decide that it's not worth the trouble to convert, and I
> have a very high threshold of how much trouble I'm willing to go to for
> these kinds of things.  For example, I would be willing to spend hours
> writing software to migrate the data, but I've found .qdf to be
> impenetrable.  My guess is that it's some kind of flat-file relational
> database of some sort.
> 
> But it has been quite a while since I've investigated.  Things may have
> changed.

Or maybe not:

A) 
http://getsatisfaction.com/theinfinitekind/topics/converting_from_quicken_qdf_files_not_supported


B) 
http://getsatisfaction.com/theinfinitekind/topics/best_way_to_import_quicken_file

C) 
http://getsatisfaction.com/theinfinitekind/topics/major_qif_import_issues