Quicken 2009 Tips

If you use a financial institution that requires that you enter what you see in a security image when updating this account in Quicken, you can't see the image from within Quicken. Here is a way to workaround this problem and see the image:

1. Start the updating of transactions for this account in Quicken.

2. When Quicken asks you to enter what you see in the security image, go to the windows temp folder for the bottle which quicken is running in -- this is usually ~/.cxoffice/<bottle name>/drive_c/windows/temp

3. In the windows temp directory, there will be an XML file with the current time and date and the name of the file will start with "QW". Open this file in a text editor and there will be an XML entity called "<image>" right after an XML entity called "<text>". This is a Base 64 encoded image.

4. Copy and paste everything between the XML tags "<image>" and "</image>" (not including <image> and </image>) and paste this into an online Base 64 decoder. Here is one Base 64 decoder that can be used: http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotnet/tools/Base64Decode/

5. After downloading the base 64 decoded image file, open it in any image viewer and you will see the security image. Now just switch back to Quicken and enter what you see in the security image into Quicken and continue with the transaction update.