If you’ve been keeping track of your personal finances in Quicken on your PC, you’ll feel right at home when you move to the Mac. Quicken 2007 is available for OS X.

In general, switching over is quick and painless. You can import into the Mac version of Quicken all of the actual transaction information, including accounts, the categories and classes you’ve used to group them, and stock holdings. Certain kinds of Windows Quicken information—like schedule transactions, QuickFill transactions, online account information, stock histories, and loan information—don’t make it, however.

For the official manual on transferring your Quicken data from Windows to the Mac, download the free “Transferring Quicken” PDF appendix from this book’s “Missing CD” at www.missingmanuals.com.

If the technology gods are smiling, the Mac version of Quicken should take only a moment to import all of your Windows data, which now appears neatly in your Register windows, ready to use. Make sure the final balances match the final balances in Quicken for Windows. (If they don’t, scan your Mac registers for duplicate or missing transactions.)