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

[Tom Route-36]

Hi all,

For anybody who may be interested in this issue, or who may have similar 
concerns with truncated Memo fields in their own exported Quicken QIF 
files, I wanted to provide an update here.  While the ideal solution 
might be to locate and patch each and every truncated Memo field in the 
QIF file, the scripting involved in doing that is just too overwhelming 
a task -- at least for me it is.  I'm also concerned about making a 
mistake or missing something in the process of attempting that.  So I 
came up with an alternate solution that I think works pretty well. 
Here's what I'm doing.

In Quicken, I'm going back and creating Transaction Reports for each of 
my important checking and credit card accounts where I know that I 
typically entered long detailed Memo fields.  These are the accounts 
where I'm seeing the most truncation in my QIF file.  The fields that 
I'm including in each Transaction Report are: Date, Num, Description, 
Memo, Category, and Amount.  I also have Show Splits checked.  In 
Quicken you can Export to PDF format using the built-in Quicken PDF 
Printer.  But in my case I print it to a third-party device: CutePDF 
Writer.  In either case, the result is the same: outputting each 
Transaction Report to a PDF file.

For my heavily used checking account going back 14 years, the resulting 
report is 135 pages in landscape mode; but it's also just 710 KB of disk 
space.  In most cases, I probably won't have much need to refer back to 
this report; since all future transactions will be in GnuCash.  But if I 
ever do have a need to go back to see the full un-truncated Memo field 
from one of those old transactions, I can just open up the PDF file, do 
Ctrl-F (Find), type in the date; and I'm back at the original 
transaction with the full Memo field.

I know my explanation here is long; but creating and saving those PDF 
reports in Quicken is really simple.  For me, it's the easiest way to 
ensure I don't lose any info in transitioning from Quicken to GnuCash.

Tom



On 8/28/2025 3:13 PM, Sherlock wrote:
> 
> Hi Tom,
> 
> Your guess is correct.  The script used the exported .txt file to 
> identify each transaction that would have truncated memos in the QIF, 
> then located the truncated transaction in the QIF file.  To limit the 
> accounts you need to export, scan the QIF file to identify the accounts 
> with at least one memo value at the limit.
> 
> Unfortunately, I have not been locate the script.  I'm not even sure it 
> was something I would have saved.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Sherlock
> 
> 
> On 8/27/25 11:38 PM, Tom Route-36 wrote:
>> 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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