Export QIF File from Quicken: How to Export Quicken Data

To export a QIF file from Quicken for Windows, open File > File Export > QIF File, choose the account and date range, tick the transaction types you want, and save the .qif. That is the whole operation, and it takes about twenty seconds per account. The parts that go wrong are everything around it: which account you picked, which years you included, and what you plan to do with the file afterward.

This guide covers the export itself, the settings that matter, the Mac situation (there is no QIF export on Mac, and has not been since 2007), and how to verify the file before you build anything on top of it. If your next step is QuickBooks, the QIF to QBO converter turns the export into a file QuickBooks will actually import, since QuickBooks does not read QIF.

How do I export a QIF file from Quicken?

In Quicken for Windows: open the data file, go to File, then File Export, then QIF File. In the dialog, set the output file path, pick the account to export from, set a start and end date, and select which items to include. Click OK and Quicken writes a plain text .qif to that path. Repeat for each account you need.

1. Open the account you want first. Quicken defaults the export to the account currently open, which is the most common source of exporting the wrong register.
2. File > File Export > QIF File. On some releases the menu reads File Export or Export, and the QIF option sits under it.
3. Set the file path. Give it the account name, not the default. You will thank yourself when you have six of them.
4. Set the date range. Blank or the full history is right for an archive. For topping up another system, export only the months missing there.
5. Choose what to include. Transactions is the one that matters. Account list, category list and memorized payees are Quicken to Quicken conveniences and mean nothing to other software.
6. Click OK and confirm the file appeared and is not zero bytes.

Which Quicken versions can export QIF?

All current Quicken Classic releases for Windows export QIF, including Deluxe, Premier, and Business and Personal. Quicken for Mac cannot: QIF export was removed after Quicken Mac 2007, and no version since has brought it back. Quicken Simplifi, being a separate cloud product, has no QIF export either.

So the platform decides your route. On Windows you export QIF and convert it to whatever the destination needs. On Mac you are limited to CSV, either from a register or from a report, and CSV loses the structure that makes a clean import possible. If you have both machines available, opening the file in Quicken for Windows purely to run the QIF export is a legitimate and common workaround.

How do I export data from Quicken for Mac?

Open the account register, then use Quicken's export to CSV, or run a report and export that. Both produce a spreadsheet style file rather than a QIF. You export one account at a time, and category and split detail depends on which columns the register or report shows, so check the output against the register before relying on it.

There is one more Mac export worth knowing about, QXF, which exists to move a Quicken file between Quicken installations. It is not an interchange format in any useful sense. Nothing outside Quicken reads QXF, so it solves moving Mac to Windows and nothing else.

What does a QIF export actually contain?

A QIF file is plain text with one tagged line per field: D for date, T for amount, P for payee, M for memo, L for category, N for check number, and a caret on its own line ending each transaction. It carries your transaction history and nothing else. There are no passwords, no full account numbers, and no bank credentials in the file.

Two quirks cause most conversion problems. Older Quicken releases wrote two digit years with a leading apostrophe, so 2003 appears as '03, a convention no other program understands, and naive importers turn it into 2103 or drop the row. And QIF has no field that says which account the transactions belong to unless you exported the account list alongside them, which is why exporting one account per file is the safer habit. The full QIF file reference walks through the tag set in detail.

How do I check the export is complete?

Compare three numbers: the transaction count in the Quicken register for the date range, the count in the converted output, and the ending balance. If all three agree, the export is complete. A QIF gives you no built in warning when a range clipped early or an account had a hidden filter applied, so the check has to be yours.

The fastest way to do that comparison is to convert the QIF to a spreadsheet and total it. Upload the file to the QIF to Excel converter and it parses every transaction, sums them, and shows the reconciliation against the file totals before you download anything. If a split got mangled or a date range clipped, the number is visibly wrong at that point rather than after you have imported into your accounting system.

Why won't Quicken let me export QIF from this account?

Quicken restricts QIF handling by account type. The export dialog will happily write bank, cash, credit card and investment registers, but the QIF import side is limited to asset, liability and cash accounts, which is the restriction people usually run into. If the QIF option is greyed out entirely, you are almost certainly in Quicken for Mac, where it does not exist.

The other reason the menu misbehaves is a lapsed subscription. Quicken Classic drops into a restricted mode when a membership ends: the file still opens and you can read it, while connected services stop. Export everything before your renewal date rather than after. People who cancel first and export second are the ones who end up on the community forums, and what you can still reach afterwards is covered in what happens to Quicken data when your subscription ends.

What do I do with the QIF file once I have it?

It depends entirely on the destination. Quicken, Moneydance and Banktivity read QIF directly, so you are done. QuickBooks does not read QIF in any version, so convert it to a QBO Web Connect file. Excel does not read it as a table, so convert to XLSX with the Quicken to Excel converter. Xero, Wave and most other importers want CSV.

What if I do not have Quicken installed any more?

Then you cannot produce a QIF, because only Quicken reads a .QDF data file. No third party converter opens one. Your options are installing a Quicken version that can open your file long enough to run the export, or rebuilding the history from bank statements and PDFs instead.

The second route is more common than you would think, especially in estate work and bookkeeping cleanups where the file is on a machine nobody can log into. If all you have left is a stack of PDF or scanned statements, an accurate document data extraction tool will turn those pages into transaction rows, and you rebuild the register from there. It is slower than an export, but it works when the export is gone.

Export once, keep the file

Whatever you are moving to, do the export properly one time and keep the QIF files. They are small, they are plain text, and they will still be readable in twenty years, which is more than can be said for the software that wrote them. Convert copies as you need them.

Coming the other way, from Moneydance, Banktivity or Microsoft Money, the QIF export works the same way and the conversion step is identical. Next steps from here: the Quicken file converter for every output format, converting Quicken to QuickBooks end to end, Quicken alternatives if you are still choosing, and can I import a QIF into QuickBooks for the short answer on that specific question.