Continued Failure to Import New Securities from Brokerage Firms

jcoley2

First I am not new user--I have been using Quicken since 1993 and upgrade to the most recent versions often. I am currently running Quicken 2020. Version 25.10, Build 27.1.25.10. On am running this on a Mac book Pro with Parallels Desktop emulating Windows 11. I have read some other forums and have the virtual memory set at maximum (8 GBs) which apparently fixed the bug for some.

Until upgrading to 2020 last year I never, ever had an issues importing new security types from any of my 10 or so financial institutions. Last year I began seeing issues with .QFX imports for Wealthfront (they do not allow automatic download.) I would have to reboot several times to finally get the entire list of new securities to load before it would stop blowing up.

Now I am getting the exact same problem from Schwab. I have never had this problem with them and the account is 2+ years old with frequent downloads. I cannot even load the first security and there are only a few in the list.

The problem arises when the new security is not found, and when you click "No" to add it freezes.

This is clearly a major bug and Quicken needs to address. This is simply not acceptable.

jcoley2

Any help is appreciated where to start.

q_lurker

How many "new securities" are you talking about?

How many securities do you have in the file?

What type of securities are these being added?  (Options I am guessing?)

jcoley2

In the case of Wealthfront there could be upwards of 100+ in the file,  With E*Trade mentioned above (Schwab was incorrect) it was only 4 new transactions.  

jcoley2

Forgot to mention, no options, just a mix of stocks and ETFs.

q_lurker

I am still unclear.  Are you getting 100 new securities from Wealthfornt per download or per month, per something; or is it 100 new transactions?

Within Quicken, Help Ctrl-click on About Quicken and you'll get a count as to how many securities are in your data file.  

Is my rephrasing correct?
The problem arises when the new security is found in the downloaded file and it does not match any existing security in the Quicken.  When you click "No" to add the newly found security as a new Quicken security, the program freezes.

Have you done a file validation on a copy of your file?  I would include the Rebuild lots option in that validation, but not the deletion of prices.

jcoley2

Ok first TY for trying to help me.  Let me see if I can be clearer.

With Wealthfront, I download the QFX file usually twice a month since it is so large.  Typically in that file there are 250-400 transactions.   Within those transactions, they are split between buys and sells.  Within the new buys, there might be 25-100 new securities which need to be loaded.

On E*Trade today, there were only 6 transactions, all buys, 4 of which were new securities. 

So I do not think this is an issue with the number of new securities being added as the E*Trade import (not QFX, but direct) is not very large.

jcoley2

BTW I have never done a rebuild.  Honestly given 27 years of history and probably 10,000+ trades I am scared to do that.

q_lurker

jcoley2 said:

...

So I do not think this is an issue with the number of new securities being added as the E*Trade import (not QFX, but direct) is not very large.

But it may be an issue with your total number of securities.  Adding 50+ every other week adds up to a lot of securities.  

Secondly, 600+ transactions per month, 6000+/year is a lot.  I have found responsiveness issues in older versions of Quicken as an account exceeded 10,000 transactions.  That too could be a factor.  

Your info strikes me as dropping you into an active trader category.  I don't think that falls into Quicken's target demographic; but that is just my opinion.  

The Account list options can tell you how many transactions you have in any each account.

jcoley2

I am not using an older version, I am on 2020.  Is thee an easy way to determine how many securities I have--some type of count function?  Is there a way to archive older securities no longer in use?  I would still need their price history to perform historical returns analysis.

Jim_Harman

Hold down the Ctrl key while selecting Help > About Quicken to see stats about your data file.

jcoley2

Size of QDF File: 220542k
Accounts:  46
Categories:  479
Memorized Payees:   1763
Securities/Max ref:  1538/12259
Transactions:  87180

NotACPA

The disparity between your "Securities" number and the "Max ref" number is cause for concern.  It indicates a corrupted, perhaps irreparably, Q data file.

SO, a backup followed by a File Validation (and, perhaps, a SuperValidation) is your 1st hope.

2nd hope is to restore from backup files until you find one that doesn't exhibit this corruption.

jcoley2

How will I know when I am no longer corrupted?  What stat am I looking for?

NotACPA

How about the one that I referenced?

jcoley2

Ok did first ever validation (not sure why I never did this before in the last 27 years.)  I choose not to do a Super Validation first and just checked the first option.  This is the results (not sure what it all means):  

Tags Corrected

Analyzing securities.

Number of old style Buy/Cash investment transactions updated: 70/0

Normal security references (up to 5000): 1385 from 1 to 1385

Abnormal references: 160 from 12100 to 12259

Transactions renumbered/highest/set to zero: 347/1545/10

Recheck of highest after renumbering: 1545

Renumbering complete.

Maximum security references after renumbering normal/moved: 1385/1545

See Q-Renumber.txt in QW.EXE directory for details.

Validation has completed.

q_lurker

My suggestion (as a variation on NotACPA's) is to have Quicken copy your data file (File / File Operations / Copy ...) and run the File / File Operations / Validate... on that copy.  That copy operation should eliminate dead wood (deleted data) from your file.   

The stat line you are looking at is the 
Securities/Max ref:  1538/12259
which should be more like 1538/1538.  
A similar line will appear in the validate log file.  

If the regular validate routine doesn't correct it, you can try the super-validate on the copy. (do the regular Validate routine, but hold down the CTRL and Shift keys until you see the message "SuperValidating".)

jcoley2

Q-Lurker I just did the validation and now me Securities/Max Ref is 1545/1545

Do you think I am all good now?

NotACPA

I do.  Glad that the Validation worked.

q_lurker

jcoley2 said:

Q-Lurker I just did the validation and now me Securities/Max Ref is 1545/1545

Do you think I am all good now?

I would hope so.  Now to get you back importing the QFX files.  

jcoley2

That unfortunately did not fix my problem.  I just tried a QFX import form Wealthfront and there are only a few transactions yet every new security trying to be added is closing out Quicken.  

What next should I try?

Jim_Harman

Will Quicken let you enter these transactions manually? Knowing that would help the debugging process. It sounds like it is not account-dependent.

If it fails with your production data file you might try creating a new test file and again entering transactions manually. That will tell if it depends on your data file or is a problem with your Quicken installation.

NotACPA

How are you creating these QFX files?  Are you initiating the download from Wealthfront?

If so, that's WebConnect, and have you checked this setting in Q? EDIT, Preferences, Web Connect ... Keep Quicken open after Web Connect completes.

q_lurker

jcoley2 said:

That unfortunately did not fix my problem.  I just tried a QFX import form Wealthfront and there are only a few transactions yet every new security trying to be added is closing out Quicken.  

What next should I try?

Since we are in testing/debugging mode -- How about manually creating the 'new' securities first, then doing the QFX import.  In that mode, Quicken should be matching the downloaded securities to an existing security rather than trying to get into the new security creation process.  The security you manually create should have the same ticker and a name close to the name the brokerage is using.    

We haven't covered this as best I recall -- we are talking about US securities and exchanges, aren't we?  And securities and accounts set up in US dollars?  Nothing fancier?

q_lurker

Another thought to check after you attempted the import again -- Did the securities reference change or does it still show the corrected 1545/1545?  

jcoley2

q_lurker said:

Since we are in testing/debugging mode -- How about manually creating the 'new' securities first, then doing the QFX import.  In that mode, Quicken should be matching the downloaded securities to an existing security rather than trying to get into the new security creation process.  The security you manually create should have the same ticker and a name close to the name the brokerage is using.    

We haven't covered this as best I recall -- we are talking about US securities and exchanges, aren't we?  And securities and accounts set up in US dollars?  Nothing fancier?

These are all NYSE or NASDAQ listed stocks or ETFs.  I did create manually and when I do that there are no issues on the QFX import from Wealthfront or E*Trade.  Problem is that is very time consuming.

On issues of re-importing a new QFX file you really cannot do this as you are hung up on the last file input.

jcoley2

q_lurker said:

Another thought to check after you attempted the import again -- Did the securities reference change or does it still show the corrected 1545/1545?  

Yes

Jim_Harman

So we seem to have narrowed the problem down to imports that add new securities.

I would try setting up a new data file and importing there. That will help determine whether it is related to your data file or your Quicken installation.

jcoley2

Jim_Harman said:

So we seem to have narrowed the problem down to imports that add new securities.

I would try setting up a new data file and importing there. That will help determine whether it is related to your data file or your Quicken installation.

So to be clear create a dummy Brokerage account and take the same QFX file from Wealthfront an attempt to import it there?

Jim_Harman

jcoley2 said:

Jim_Harman said:

So we seem to have narrowed the problem down to imports that add new securities.

I would try setting up a new data file and importing there. That will help determine whether it is related to your data file or your Quicken installation.

So to be clear create a dummy Brokerage account and take the same QFX file from Wealthfront an attempt to import it there?

Go to File > New Quicken file and make a test data file. This will be completely separate from your production data.

Create a dummy brokerage account in that file and try importing the Wealthfront QFX file to that account. If that succeeds, then the problem is with your production data file.

If it fails, the problem is either with the QFX file (unlikely) or with your Quicken installation. In that case I would then do a clean uninstall and reinstall of Quicken and try again with the test file.

jcoley2

Some good news today...obviously the markets have been crazy volatile.  Today I imported two files:  one from E*Trade that had just 1 new security and transaction.  No problem.  I then imported the Wealthfront QFX file that had 760 transaction and ~30 new securities.  No problem in new security import/set-up.  No issues either.