How to load data from QHI.DAT file

If you have an old Quicken Home Inventory or Quicken Home Inventory Manager installation and want to save your inventory database, you probably have problems using this data on a new computer system. This is because of various incompatibilities between multiple versions of Intuit inventory programs.

However, there's a simple way out. Download a program called Attic Manager. It's a home inventory program, just like QHIM, with one specific feature: it is able to import databases of all Quicken Home Inventory programs. At the time I write this, it supports the oldest IDB files, then the newer .QHI files and also the latest MDF files which come with most recent versions of Quicken.

Now, how does this help you, when you have a DAT file? Well, QHI.DAT is not really a database with your items. If you have QHI.DAT file, this means you have the oldest version of QHI, and there should be a file called QHI.IDB around as well. Attic Manager is able to load all items, locations, categories and other data from QHI.IDB file, so use that one.

As far as I know, Attic Manager is the only product on the market that is able to do this. Once you load the database into Attic Manager, you can export it into CSV format and then load into any Inventory program that supports loading from CSV or Excel (most of them do). Or, you can simply use Attic Manager itself. It is simple, clean, and fast. It works on newer versions of Windows, like Windows 7 and Windows 8 and also on 64bit systems as well. And knowing your data can be exported at any time sets you free from vendor lock-in.

Tweet to @mbabuskov Milan Babuškov, 2013-05-15