[GNC] Exporting Quicken Data into QIF Files for GnuCash truncates Memo Fields

[Tom Route-36]

Hi Sherlock,

I'm guessing that once you produced the Transaction Reports in Quicken 
you then had to export each of them to Excel Compatible Format (i.e. Tab 
Delimited Export Files .txt).  I could probably do that, even though it 
would take quite a while; since I'd have to do it account by account 
(and there are 20+ years worth of them).  And since I can't really be 
sure which transactions have truncated memos, I'd pretty much have to 
assume all of them have problems.

But where I'd really run into trouble is trying to figure out a script 
to correct the truncated memos in the QIF files -- which I'd probably 
also need to do account by account.  Do you still have any such example 
script files that I could study as a guide in how to setup such scripts? 
  I've never really tackled anything this complex before.

Tom



On 8/27/2025 10:53 PM, Sherlock wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> In September 2022, I successfully migrated our 25 year old Quicken data 
> file to GnuCash 4.12 on Windows 10. To work around Quicken's QIF export 
> memo truncation issue, I recall running queries in Quicken to produce 
> transaction report files with the impacted transactions and then using a 
> script to correct the truncated memos in the QIF file.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Sherlock
> 
> 
> On 8/27/25 8:46 PM, Tom Route-36 wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This is more of a Quicken question than a GnuCash question; but I'm 
>> wondering if anyone here has run into a similar issue with 
>> transferring data from Quicken to GnuCash -- and (maybe) figured out a 
>> way around it.
>>
>> When I transfer transactions from Quicken 2016 into a QIF file for 
>> importing into GnuCash, I'm finding that all the Quicken Memo fields 
>> get truncated down to 30 characters regardless of how many characters 
>> are actually in those Memo fields.  For reference, note that Quicken 
>> 2016 supports Memo fields up to 64 characters.  And GnuCash v5.12 
>> supports Memo fields of well over 100 characters.
>>
>> What I'm wondering or asking here is this.  Has anyone else run into 
>> this issue?  And does anyone have a suggestion for how it might be 
>> possible to export the full 64-character Memo fields from Quicken? 
>> (FYI, we're talking over 20 years of Quicken data here.)  Any help or 
>> ideas would be appreciated.
>>
>> Tom
> 
> 
> 
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