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I would like to disable placeholders for one account, but can't

unknown

If I go to Preferences, "Download transactions preferences", "Edit Settings", the account I want to disable placeholders is not listed here. I do have the account setup as "Keep this account separate" and may be causing the problem. Any ideas?

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Sherlock

Have you tried temporarily unchecking Keep this account separate?

UKR

Placeholder transactions are not supposed to be disabled. They are supposed to be resolved by entering the missing information.

About Placeholders (Quicken Windows)

"N/A" in
certain fields of an investment transaction indicates that you have
Placeholder transactions in your account that need to be deleted and replaced
with the correct Buy / Sell / etc. transaction that should have been recorded
here..

For more about Placeholders please go into Quicken Help (press the F1 key from
anywhere in Quicken) and perform a Contents search for
"placeholder".

Alternatively or in addition to the above, read the first few articles found
here: https://www.quicken.com/search/site/placeholder

Sherlock

Have you tried temporarily unchecking Keep this account separate?

I suspect the account is not listed because Online Services for the account have been deactivated. Note: The placeholders you have provided are old.

Jim_Harman

Regardless of whether the problem account is in the list, the option you are referencing does not "disable" placeholders or make them go away. It disables comparing your share balances in Quicken to the share balances that are downloaded when you download a new set of transactions. This then prevents Quicken from creating new placeholders to force the share balances to match.

If you describe what problem you are trying to solve, we may be able to point you in the right direction.

unknown

Have you tried temporarily unchecking Keep this account separate?

Yes I tried unchecking "Keep this account separate" but did not help. I think since "downloading transactions" is not enabled, could be the problem. They are old. I am trying to go back far in the account and change how I report items. Thanks.

unknown

Placeholder transactions are not supposed to be disabled. They are supposed to be resolved by entering the missing information.

About Placeholders (Quicken Windows)

"N/A" in
certain fields of an investment transaction indicates that you have
Placeholder transactions in your account that need to be deleted and replaced
with the correct Buy / Sell / etc. transaction that should have been recorded
here..

For more about Placeholders please go into Quicken Help (press the F1 key from
anywhere in Quicken) and perform a Contents search for
"placeholder".

Alternatively or in addition to the above, read the first few articles found
here: https://www.quicken.com/search/site/placeholder

I wanted to disable them because each time I tried to resolve a placeholder, my system crashed, and probably I did not know what I was doing.

unknown

I have not enabled "downloading transactions but still got some placeholders. I wanted to disable them because each time I tried to resolve a placeholder, my system crashed, and probably I did not know what I was doing.

UKR

If the brokerage account was NEVER downloaded, you cannot have placeholders. They are the result of comparing the Holdings at the brokerage to your records in Quicken.

Validate your
Quicken data file. It may have become damaged over time or if you ever had
crashes, hang-ups or loops while running Quicken. Repeated crashes may
eventually render a data file "broken beyond repair".

Please run this
procedure, skipping no steps:

- Make a copy of
your data file: Click File / File Operations / Copy. Do not change any Copy Option settings. Save
file under a new name in same folder as current Quicken data file. (The Copy process appears to be performing a
record-by-record copy of the data file and not just a simple binary image copy.
This has been reported as recovering some otherwise not repairable
files)

If Quicken reports an error creating the Copy file, skip directly to the last
step.

- Open the copied file in Quicken.

- Click File / File
Operations / Validate and Repair. Click "Validate File" and
"Rebuild investing lots", check to make sure the copied file is being
validated. If you suspect that a damaged Quotes Price History causes your
problems, also select "Delete investing price history". Click OK. Let it run.

- Fix any errors
logged as not repaired by Quicken.

- Click File / File
Operations. Press and hold SHIFT+CTRL as you click Validate and Repair. The
next popup should show "Supervalidate" somewhere in header or text.
Click "Supervalidate File", check to make sure the copied file is
being validated, click OK. Let it run. It might run for a while.

- Again fix any errors logged as not repaired by Quicken.

- Now close and
restart Quicken using this new file and try your failing action again. If it
works, keep using the new file and abandon the old one.

Jim_Harman

If the brokerage account was NEVER downloaded, you cannot have placeholders. They are the result of comparing the Holdings at the brokerage to your records in Quicken.

Validate your
Quicken data file. It may have become damaged over time or if you ever had
crashes, hang-ups or loops while running Quicken. Repeated crashes may
eventually render a data file "broken beyond repair".

Please run this
procedure, skipping no steps:

- Make a copy of
your data file: Click File / File Operations / Copy. Do not change any Copy Option settings. Save
file under a new name in same folder as current Quicken data file. (The Copy process appears to be performing a
record-by-record copy of the data file and not just a simple binary image copy.
This has been reported as recovering some otherwise not repairable
files)

If Quicken reports an error creating the Copy file, skip directly to the last
step.

- Open the copied file in Quicken.

- Click File / File
Operations / Validate and Repair. Click "Validate File" and
"Rebuild investing lots", check to make sure the copied file is being
validated. If you suspect that a damaged Quotes Price History causes your
problems, also select "Delete investing price history". Click OK. Let it run.

- Fix any errors
logged as not repaired by Quicken.

- Click File / File
Operations. Press and hold SHIFT+CTRL as you click Validate and Repair. The
next popup should show "Supervalidate" somewhere in header or text.
Click "Supervalidate File", check to make sure the copied file is
being validated, click OK. Let it run. It might run for a while.

- Again fix any errors logged as not repaired by Quicken.

- Now close and
restart Quicken using this new file and try your failing action again. If it
works, keep using the new file and abandon the old one.

Quicken will also create a Placeholder if you enter an Adjust Share Balance transaction (AKA Update share balance if you access it from the gear menu) even if you have never downloaded transactions.

The Placeholder forces the share balance in the selected security to whatever value you enter for the chosen date, and automatically adjusts the correction if you add or edit earlier transactions for that security.

Sherlock

Have you tried temporarily unchecking Keep this account separate?

Sounds like you want to remove the placeholder transactions. If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/how-do-you-delete-remove-a-place-holder-entry-do...

Jim_Harman

Have you tried temporarily unchecking Keep this account separate?

Or if you really want to delete all the placeholders, do a backup first, then click on Placeholder entries at the bottom of the Transaction list (register) and at the bottom right click on Delete all.

As others have posted, it is generally better to resolve the placeholders by adding or correcting other transactions so that the number of shares the placeholders are adding or removing is zero before deleting them.

mshiggins

If the brokerage account was NEVER downloaded, you cannot have placeholders. They are the result of comparing the Holdings at the brokerage to your records in Quicken.

Validate your
Quicken data file. It may have become damaged over time or if you ever had
crashes, hang-ups or loops while running Quicken. Repeated crashes may
eventually render a data file "broken beyond repair".

Please run this
procedure, skipping no steps:

- Make a copy of
your data file: Click File / File Operations / Copy. Do not change any Copy Option settings. Save
file under a new name in same folder as current Quicken data file. (The Copy process appears to be performing a
record-by-record copy of the data file and not just a simple binary image copy.
This has been reported as recovering some otherwise not repairable
files)

If Quicken reports an error creating the Copy file, skip directly to the last
step.

- Open the copied file in Quicken.

- Click File / File
Operations / Validate and Repair. Click "Validate File" and
"Rebuild investing lots", check to make sure the copied file is being
validated. If you suspect that a damaged Quotes Price History causes your
problems, also select "Delete investing price history". Click OK. Let it run.

- Fix any errors
logged as not repaired by Quicken.

- Click File / File
Operations. Press and hold SHIFT+CTRL as you click Validate and Repair. The
next popup should show "Supervalidate" somewhere in header or text.
Click "Supervalidate File", check to make sure the copied file is
being validated, click OK. Let it run. It might run for a while.

- Again fix any errors logged as not repaired by Quicken.

- Now close and
restart Quicken using this new file and try your failing action again. If it
works, keep using the new file and abandon the old one.

From C. D. Bales:

"If the brokerage account was NEVER downloaded, you cannot have placeholders".

That is simply not true.

"They are the result of comparing the Holdings at the brokerage to your records in Quicken".

While that is the most likely way to get placeholders, and I suspect that is how the placeholders for this user were generated; it is not the only way they could have been created.

A Placeholder is actually a Quicken "Adjust Share Balance" transaction; and Adjust Share Balance transactions can be created manually by the user (see the Enter Transactions > Enter transaction dropdown list).

And to confirm what was said earlier by Jim Harmon: there is no way to "disable" placeholders. You can only prevent the comparison, by Quicken, of downloaded holdings to Quicken holdings ... which will disable the attempt by Quicken to create a placeholder when the downloaded holdings disagree with the existing Quicken holdings. And even if you allow Quicken to attempt to create placeholders for holdings mis-matches, you can avoid the placeholders by refusing Quicken's offer.

The original poster should provide evidence describing exactly how the existence of Placeholders in the account is being determined (many users do not know how to identify placeholders); and what event(s) occurred in the account just before, and just after, the appearance of the placeholders. Plus any other evidence that would shed more light on the problem.

Jim_Harman

@labusker,

Sorry, this discussion has drifted pretty far from your original problem.

It seems that your main problem is that Quicken crashes when you try to resolve a Placeholder. Have you tried UKR's recommendation of copying and validating your file? That might resolve the crashes.

If not, please let us know whether there were validation errors, and exactly what you are doing when it crashes, any error messages you get, etc.

unknown

Thanks. Once I deleted all the placeholders at the bottom of the page, I don't get them anymore. I therefore won't see anymore errors.