Copy account transactions from backup to active file

Unknown · January 2017

Using QW 2015. Until 2 months ago, I had a checking acct linked to an investment acct. I mistakenly changed the investment acct so it was no longer linked and Qkn deleted the checking acct. I have a backup from before this deletion, but I have downloaded/entered too many transactions to simply restore using this 2-month old backup. Is there a way to copy the deleted checking acct transactions to my current Qkn file, and then re-construct the linkages between the checking acct and the investment acct?

NotACPA · January 2017

No need to restore if all is as you describe in your 1st two sentences. Just do TOOLS, Account List, click EDIT across from the name of the brokerage account and re-check "Show cash in a checking account".

Those cash transactions weren't removed from the file, they were just shuffled back into the brokerage account from whence they came.

A "Linked Checking Account" doesn't really exist. It's just a convenient way to show cash transactions that occur in your brokerage account.

Unknown · January 2017

From the Account List, I selected Edit on the line of the brokerage account, checked "Show cash in a checking account" and then selected OK. Nothing happened. When I selected Edit again, the window still shows "no" for "Show cash in a checking account." I think I'm doing everything you recommended, but it's not solving my problem.

Unknown · January 2017

Well I actually disagree. In theory that is what suppose to happen. As in you can switch back an forth between having a linked cash account and not having one. Now frankly I don't know why in this case it did nothing. But I have tested this in the past and switching from a linked cash account to none, NEVER worked right. It would do it, but transfers and other things would be wrong.

And from what I can see this operation doesn't work like "A "Linked Checking Account" doesn't really exist. It's just a
convenient way to show cash transactions that occur in your brokerage
account."

It works much more like when you use the wizard to move shares between accounts.
As in it executes a series of commands to change the transactions changing things like a buy to a buyx.

John Kligora You can try exporting/importing the deleted transactions using QIF format. The real tricky part is going to be the transfers.

You will also need the trick given in the first link of this FAQ to do the import into an account other than a cash/liability account:
https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

Unknown · February 2017

Thanks for your suggestion. I've been very busy over the last three weeks, so I'm just getting ready to use your ImportQIF program now. Since this is an investment account, should I delete the old investment account (to get rid of the old, screwed up transactions) and create a new one with the same name? You also mentioned transfers would be the tricky part. Does that mean I may need to recreate transactions that affected other accounts? Thanks again for your help.

Unknown · February 2017

You don't want to delete the old account, you are just adding the missing ones to the existing one. Make sure that you select a proper date range to get just the transactions you want. Since it is by day you might have some overlap, but hopefully it will be minimal.

On the transfers. First make sure that you have at least one cash account (ImportQIF will pick it for you) otherwise they won't work at all.
Second the problem I was talking about is that you might find duplicates created.

If this was a mass import the other problem would be matching transfer to the wrong transaction.

Unknown · February 2017

P.S. I just reread your comment about "screwed up transactions.

I just reread everything and realize that I didn't get what you are trying do clearly in my head.

And now I realize that you have put yourself in a situation that frankly you are not going to get out of short of going to the backup and "catching it up".

You can't work with the current data file because it is already messed in a way that you can't recover. Once you broke the link to the cash account it would have done things that short going in and fixing all those messed up transactions that were transfers to the checking account.

I was thinking that you were just going to need to use QIF to transfer some transactions from the one file to the other one.

Unknown · February 2017

BTW I'm sorry I got your hopes up on this.

Unknown · February 2017

Here's more detail. The problem is with my Vanguard account. Originally it had a Vanguard-CASH account (including checking) along with my Investment account. Last year, I mistakenly told QKN this was a single investment acct, so QKN deleted the -CASH acct.
I have all of the old transactions, for the Investment acct and the -CASH acct in a backup file. Is there a way to create a -CASH acct (linked to the Vanguard Investment acct) in my "current" QKN file, and then import transactions for both accts (from the backup) into their respective "current" accts?
Or is there a better way to do this? I've made so many updates to my other accts in QKN that I don't think it is feasible to update my backup copy.

Unknown · February 2017

There is only one way to create a linked cash account, and that is by selecting that option on the account details.

If you do that in your current data file, what is the result?
As in what is wrong/missing?

Unknown · February 2017

I just brought up the Account Details window and selected "Show cash in a checking account." After hitting OK, nothing happened. QKN did not instruct me to backup my file, and a -CASH account was not created. Perhaps you can only create a linked cash account (a) when the account is initially created, or (b) after the account is created, but only once.

Perhaps the only way to recover is to:delete the Vanguard account in my current file and then:

manually create the account again, with a linked checking account
use ImportQIF to copy all of the Vanguard Investment transactions from my backup copy to the current file
to ensure transfers are being handled correctly, manually enter all of my -CASH transactions. This will be tedious but may be the only way to resolve this.

Can you suggest any other approach? Thanks

q_lurker · February 2017

Not true on either count (QW2014, though I have no reason to believe anything has changed since then). Something else must be going on with your file. The Vanguard-Cash cash account should appear in the Banking group immediately after you hit the OK. You might try the same steps on an old backup or on a test file or as a test on a different non-retirement account.

mshiggins · February 2017

You can't have a linked cash account with a retirement account. I think the only exception would be if the file originated in MS Money as Money did allow linked cash accounts with retirement accounts.

Unknown · February 2017

I agree with the others it should have created the cash account.
And it doesn't sound like you are working in an retirement account, because that kind of account wouldn't have the option on the account details page to select.

So basically I don't know why it isn't creating the cash account for you.
I also don't understand why you would think that Quicken would do a backup for you.
Hopefully you are doing your own backups before trying anything major.

You might want to do this procedure to see if it makes any difference:
File -> File Operations -> Copy... use the defaults (you can rename the file if you like) open the copy
File -> File Operations -> Validate & Repair... -> Validate File -> OK

Test for being able to create the cash account. Also check to make sure you didn't just hide that cash account: Tools -> Manage Hidden Accounts.

Now with all of this said let me get back to basics and maybe you can decide what you want to do from there.

What the link to cash accounts does is tell Quicken not to allow any action in the investment account that is transaction that would change the cash balance.

This means that say the broker sends the action Buy XXX shares of YYY.
That action will be changed to a BuyX. As in instead of getting the cash from the investment account balance it will get it from doing a transfer from the linked cash account. The same would be true of a Sell, they are converted to SellX. And any pure "cash" transaction would be routed to the cash account, and accepted there.

QIF format knows nothing of this "routing". QIF does though have both a Sell and a SellX action.

So here is my problem on advising you what can do. You have never explained what is missing. It is quite hard to tell you how to fix something if I don't even understand what is missing. Last night I tried doing this operation in Quicken 2017 (deleting a linked cash account), and it worked fine. Now I know from experience this is not always been true. I think they fixed this somewhere along the ways, or it only messes up in some cases.

There is also a question in my mind of what you want the final outcome to be.
As in do you want a linked cash account or not?

Now given that the backup file has the linked cash account working properly, the actions in your investment account are going to be like BuyX and SellX. Clearly these will not import unless there the cash account exists.

Now if you were desiring to go to a non linked cash setup, then all these actions that are doing transfers would have to be changed to their none transfer equivalent. And maybe the cash transaction actions might have to change too. This is clearly something you can't do (I wouldn't even want to try it and I know all about QIF actions).

Now it is possible to just create the cash account without actually being linked to the investment account. And given that it is there then importing of the QIF actions should at least work.

But of course it will not perform like a real linked cash account for the future. As in Buys will not be changed to BuyX when your broker sends them.
So that might be one possible "solution".

And yes another possible idea is to delete the investment account and recreate it so that you do can create a proper linked cash account. And doing that it might be possible to even recombine things.

I'm pretty such that given a proper linked cash account, that the imports from the old data file should import correctly.

Also since you have some transactions that will be in the new data file that are Buy instead of BuyX, the question comes up what will happen if you export them from a copy of your current data file before working with this copy of your data file? (you certainly should be working in a copy BTW)

I have not tested this, but I believe that Quicken will do the same thing with the QIF imported transactions it would have done with Direct Connect or a QFX file, and translate the actions to ones with transfers and redirect the cash ones to the cash account.

Unknown · April 2017

I have a somewhat related question. I have a long time investment account with the linked "show cash in Ckg Account" arrangement. Can I now simply delete or uncheck the box for "Show cash in ckg accout" and the cash account will combine with my investment account? Thanks. hrl43

q_lurker · April 2017

That is the way it should work. But I would make a backup copy first, just in case.

Copy account transactions from backup to active file

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