finding old files when updating to Lion

I made the horrible mistake of updating to Lion and now I am trying to install
Quicken again.
It turns out to require an entirely different program and I have to update old files.
But there is no way to find the old files. I have no idea where they are
because everything is changed. It is a total nightmare. All my financial
records are lost.

Would there be some way to find old account records in Time Machine? I have blocked
its use since the conversion so as not to write over anything.

Not too familiar with where that program stores the files but I doubt the location has been moved. If you remember where they were stored try looking there from the Finder or with Spotlight.

If that fails you should be able to restore them from your Time Machine backup. Try following these tips How to restore data from Time Machine in Mountain Lion | Macworld. That should work for Lion as well.

Unless you've specified a custom location, your Quicken files should be easily locatable in Documents. There is no change I'm aware of in Quicken file storage from one OS version to another.

As you mention, you should also be able to easily find the files in Time Machine, just mount the drive and navigate through the folder. I'm not sure why you can't just do a spotlight find for files ending in .qdfm, however.

Hopefully your story will remind users of two things:

1. Check to make sure your vital programs are compatible with the OS you're upgrading to, and

2. Don't wait years and years to upgrade your OS. Stay up-to-date (greatly reduces the chance of any trauma).

The good news is that you have backups, so your files aren't gone -- just momentarily misplaced.