QuickBooks 2010 R6 Update – 64 Bit QuickBooks PDF Fix and More!
At long last Intuit has released the QuickBooks 2010 R6 update to Manual update. This update has a long list of fixes, many that have been VERY anxiously awaited. I’ll review the major changes as I see them (there are more than I list here). Automatic update usually follows a few days later.
The Major Changes
PDF Driver: The big change for some people is that they have fixed (hopefully) the PDF Driver for 64 bit PC’s, and for Windows 7 users. This has been an extremely vexing problem for many users, and this revision should take care of most of the problems. It works on my test system – but I’ll note that a lot of people had problems that I never ran into on my test system. Let us know if it works for you!
System Crashes: A large number of changes have been made to improve system reliability, fixing bugs that cause some systems to freeze or crash. If you have had intermittent crashes in QB 2010, you should consider getting this update soon.
User Licenses Icon: Some people may not think this is a “major” change, but it has bugged a LOT of people. You can now permanently remove the User License icon from the icon bar. Prior to this, if you deleted it, after restarting QuickBooks it came back.
Please note that this revision does not make major changes to the database manager – that is, you don’t have a major conversion issue as we have sometimes run into in the past year. This is a relatively straight-forward update to implement.
Other Changes
I’m going to summarize what I see as the important changes here. For a complete listing of changes see the Intuit/QuickBooks update page.
- Updating from Prior Versions: There are a number of bug fixes that take care of problems when people are upgrading a company file to QB 2010 from prior versions.
- Backups: A number of errors that occurred when trying to make a backup file have been resolved.
- Payroll: Quite a few bug fixes and updates here. As always, if you are using the Payroll features, it is very important that you update to the latest release of QuickBooks. One nice addition: You can start a payroll run, save the work that you have completed, and then finish your payroll later. Paychecks are not committed until you finish the entire payroll run.
- Client Data Review: A number of bug fixes and speed improvements in this very useful tool.
- Company Snapshot: Some performance improvements and some bug fixes.
- Intuit Statement Writer: A long list of bug fixes and improvements to this tool.
- Multi-Currency: A number of bug fixes here. If you use this feature then you really should get this update. Note, however, that there are no major changes to how QuickBooks works with multiple currencies.
- Labels: The print dialog box for printing labels now has a “Number of Copies” option.
- Memorized Reports: Several changes here. When creating and memorizing reports from the Transactions tab of the Customer Center, changes are now retained. Also, memorized reports will now retain filters for custom fields.
- Sales Tax Reports: Sometimes some people would get an error “Too many transactions in group” – this is fixed.
Should You Update?
That is always a tough question to answer. I’m going to give you several answers, you can pick the one that you like:
- In general terms, I always recommend that you wait to update until the revision has been in use for a few weeks. Why be the first person to find a new bug? Intuit hasn’t had the greatest track record lately – a number of new bugs have been introduced with revisions. Let’s see if this is stable and bug-free. I will note that there has been quite a lot of attention in Intuit lately to resolve this kind of situation. If you don’t need any of the fixes, consider waiting a bit.
- On the other hand, there are some very important fixes in this release. If you are using QuickBooks to manage your payroll, if you are using the multiple currency feature, if you have been running into problems with the PDF drivers on a 64 bit system or Windows 7, you should consider installing this update. These are some big issues, and there are important changes here. But, before installing, make a backup copy of your file before you install the update, just in case there is an issue that pops up.
I will note that I have been running a copy of the R6 update for a number of weeks now, and I haven’t come across any problems. I can’t say that I have exhaustively tested it – but nothing has popped up that I don’t like. I have not installed this in any client sites yet, so I don’t have a wide range of installations that test this.
If you have any problems, be sure to post a comment here!
UPDATE: See my article on QuickBooks 2011 and PDF drivers - the problem should be RESOLVED once and forall (if you upgrade).
Payroll, multipl currency, pdf problems
Category: Program Updates, QB 2010, Vista and Windows 7
About the Author (Author Profile)
Charlie Russell is the founder of CCRSoftware. He’s been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70′s, focusing on inventory and accounting software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Look for Charlie’s articles in the QuickBooks and Beyond blog, as well as his California Wildflower Hikes blog.
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R5? They are up to R7 now. Not sure where you are getting R5 from. You might want to try the R7 update. Hard to say why you would be getting an error like that without having my hands on the system, there are a million picky little reasons why it might happen.
I am in Canada if that makes a difference.??
I have applied the R5 upgrade, the latest one they show available for me and it seems to have fixed my pdf problems.
Thanks for your help.
Wendy, the Canadian versions are often on a different update schedule than the US versions. I don’t work with the Canadian versions except on rare occasions. So when I talk about “versions” and releases of QuickBooks in this blog, I’m talking about the US versions unless I specifically note otherwise.
Hi,
I am now unable to save to PDF or email PDF invoices using QB Pro 2010 Release 9B on Windows 7 64bit. It was working a couple weeks ago but now I am getting the same driver error I had encountered on earlier version/releases. I tried removing/reinstalling the PDF converter driver but that did not work. Any other suggestions?
Thank you!
Hard to say without having hands on the system. Take a look at “method 1″ in this older article: http://qbblog.ccrsoftware.info/2008/10/solving-quickbooks-problems-on-64-bit-vista/
Thank you, Charlie. I followed the steps to manually assign the “NUL:” port to both the 300 and 400 versions of the PDF converter, updated the advanced settings, and made sure neither converter was set as the default printer. This seems to have worked.
hi, i am running quickbooks pro 2010 on windows 7 with office 2010 and i am unable to save to pdf or e mail from quickbooks. Have tried various fixes from intuit but to no avail,any ideas
Chris, several things may be going on. Office 2010 and Pro 2010 don’t always work together well (some people make it work, others cannot), so that is one issue. I don’t think Intuit is officially supporting Outlook 2010 with Pro 2010 yet. Saving as a PDF – there are a bunch of possible reasons as this and other articles in my blog talk about. Depends on what kind of error message you are getting.
Help – Installed R6 and can’t get in QB
We have a 5 computers networked using Quickbooks. I installed the R6 update this morning on one computer, now it says all other computers are running an older version and won’t let me on my quickbooks, while all the other computers can access it. None of the others were asked to install the update.
Reva, why R6? That isn’t the most up-to-date version.
Press F2 when you are in QuickBooks on each computer, see what the product revision is on each one. All should be on the same revision. You can download the latest revision from the QuickBooks support site, or enable “automatic updates” on each of your computers.
QB2010pro; R10P; Win 7; 64 bit. I installed QB2010pro recently on new hp laptop and restored my company from a different computer. First, it uninstalled my wireless printer. I had to reinstall my printer. I can reconcile accts however when the “Can’t print to printer” screen comes up – I press ok, “Can’t print to printer” screen comes up again – I press ok. Then it brings up the Congratulations! Your account is balanced. So I press print and it will print to my printer. It will also display the rec report. I tried to email a financial report to my accountant today and it tells me “Can’t print to printer” – I press okay and then it brings up a screen that says “Quickbooks was unable to convert your report to PDF.” I’m not sure where to start to fix this problem. Any suggestions?
Since installing the latest update, we are having trouble printing some reports. They print small and in the upper left hand corner.