Allow disabling of reminders when restoring a backup

Rocket J Squirrel

Today I restored a month-old backup file. I ended up with about a dozen reminders (scheduled transactions) which had passed their due dates and Quicken wanted to execute them.

It is very difficult to work with multiple reminders; they must be deleted or ignored one at a time. Multiple selection is not allowed in the Bill and Income Reminders window.

My suggestion is this:

When restoring a backup file which has overdue reminders, prompt the user what to do about active reminders. I can think of several useful options

• "ignore [skip] all"
• "delete all"
• "do nothing" which would amount to leaving the overdue reminders as they are

Rocket J Squirrel

Bumpty bumpty bump.

Rocket J Squirrel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haAduyUNQN0

splasher

Bumpity

DoctorBrown

I would like to raise this as a code RED as far as backups are concerned. I restored a backup that was 2 months old and the 'auto enter' and overdue reminders made the file unusable for my needs. Any earlier and the backup is essentially useless. If you are restoring a backup, you should be able to see the file as it was on the date the backup was made. Because typically you are trying to redo or undo something that has gone wrong, and these reminders make determining what went wrong almost impossible.

Rocket J Squirrel

With all the problems Quicken has, restoring a backup is recommended more often than ever. Reminders that want to execute upon restore continue to be a problem. So, in other words, "bump."

Sherlock

If you would like to prevent auto entry of reminders when you restore a backup of Quicken file, I suggest temporarily resetting the system date and time to the date and time of the backup Quicken file.  You may then manage the reminders as you see fit before correcting the system date and time.

DoctorBrown

Setting date/time of the computer in order to block Auto Entry reminders from executing is, at best, a clumsy workaround, at worst, it can cause unexpected PC behavior. On today's computer, there are may functions that depend on the date/time to be set to the correct time.
1. The user must disable the setting: Set time Automatically. If not, the system will update and set the clock to the current time after a few seconds.
2. If the clock is set to a prior time communication to other computers on the internet could be affected because digital certificates used for secure communication may become invalid.
3. There are may scheduled tasks that are configured that a user may have no knowledge. They could be triggered to run and cause unexpected behavior.
4. If you have any cloud storage syncing enable, I have no idea how that could mess up your files.

So although you may succeed when you reset the system time, you are taking a calculated risk. This is something a user should not have to do.

splasher

So, are you suggesting in a round about way that the user disable their internet connection prior to setting the date back to avoid all of the issues you listed?

DoctorBrown

I don't have a comprehensive list of all the system functions that may be affected. I don't know if disabling the internet connection is sufficient. I'm saying there is a risk in resetting the system clock that the user should not have to take. I am pointing out to Quicken that there is a problem with the recovery from a backup that MUST be addressed. Otherwise a backup is almost useless unless the backup is very recent (a day, a week, a month, I don't know). if you need to look at a file from a year ago, then I hope you have good luck.

Rocket J Squirrel

Oh, I get it now. Unplug the laptop and take it across the International Date Line (backwards, not forwards) enough times that you reach the date of the backup file. If the seasons don't match, cross the horizon also. Then restore the backup.

Some of the suggestions for "workarounds" on this forum are simply unhelpful.

Rocket J Squirrel

I'm gonna have to bump this one again.

I back up Quicken after every session, and only rarely need to resort to using a backup file. But when I do, what a mess with reminders!

When creating a backup, the user probably doesn't know whether he'll ever need it. Will it be restored tomorrow because of a problem? Or will it sit for years until the user needs some info not found in the current file? These two cases probably call for different reminder handling and is why a restore-time option to deal with reminders is badly needed.

UKR

As discussed in an enhancement request for Year End Copy Archive Files, an option to exclude or halt execution of scheduled reminders when accessing archive files would also be a big enhancement.

Programmers, please also add this to the Restore function.

Jim_Harman

I agree this would be a valuable enhancement, especially when users must restore a backup from some time ago.

splasher

Hey Quicken, Inc. What is so difficult about implementing this idea? You continue to add features that are either useless or unwanted by the vast majority of the users, but can't do this idea which would help a large number of users that periodically need to restore a backup to find some information or resolve an issue caused by a bug in the current version.

The issue of Quicken resetting Opening Balances would be a prime example of lots of users having to look in a backup to find what the OB should be instead of what Quicken changed it to through its faulty handing of reconnecting an account for One Step Update.

DoctorBrown

Hey splasher good to see someone is still championing this. I sure think this should have been fixed YEARS ago. Over the last couple month I've been tying to merge data from a backup from 2010 into my current file and what a wholly mess that is. So, in reality saving backups at this point is practically useless (unless you are a gluten for punishment).

I wonder what's going on on this forum. In the suggestions section, I posted a lengthy discussion of the issues trying to work with backup and, I swear, that post has disappeared! So maybe we're just … Never mind.

ColdGranite

I have recently had to re-construct my Quicken file, based on a 2-year-old backup.

When I open the backup, Quicken immediately updated all of the "auto-entries" right up to the current time.

This is useless… first of all, because many of the amounts have changed in the intervening period, and now I have to manually delete or modify them…

,,,and secondly… because if I open an old file or an old backup, I want to see the Account amounts as they were AT THAT TIME. That is specifically one of the reasons why I would even GO to an old file.

Therefore I suggest that if opening a file, QUICKEN should warn and permit me to suppress auto-entries from occurring. If this is deemed to be too intrusive to do at EVERY opening, then it could be displayed only when the opened file has not been updated for more than some user-configurable time period (under preferences).

Quicken Kristina

Hello @ColdGranite,

Thank you for coming to the Community to share your feedback! There is already an Idea requesting this functionality, so I merged your request with the existing Idea.

Thank you!

DoctorBrown

Hello @ColdGranite,

I STILL have not finished the recovery from the 2010 file I posted about. I gave up for awhile. It's been on my mind but haven't got to it. There is sort of a way to get the restored backup so it may be able to be used. I've tried this and had some luck.

1. After restoring the backup, open Manage Bill and Income reminders. Delete all reminders.
2. Go to the accounts where reminders were active. Delete all the auto entered transactions that have been added since the backup.

This seems to get the account back to the state it was in. YRMV (For an EV)

ColdGranite

@DoctorBrown

I was able to merge files by "exporting to QIF". It allows you to choose a time period, so I exported the recent entries that I knew to be valid, and imported them into the 2022 backup that I wanted as the base.

I had to delete some duplicate entries because I overlapped the time-periods by a couple of months, but in the end it came out okay.

DoctorBrown

yep, that is the stuff that gets you. This works for straight transactions, but if you have categories that transfer to other accounts, thing go South fast.

Good luck,

vince

I have run into this many times over the years. I can't believe this has been allowed to fester and frustrate us.