How do I delete an old "Only Once" reminder that says "Could not delete item"?

redsnapper
redsnapper Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
in Paying Bills, Online Billers & Reminders (Windows)
I found a "closed" discussion on this very question (from April 2019), but it was apparently never resolved. In this case, I ran the "File:File Operations:Validate file" as suggested, and although this apparently found and fixed literally hundreds of issues, I still can't delete any of my old "Only Once" reminders that were long since entered and cleared. The "Edit" button doesn't work. The "Ignore" button doesn't work. The "Enter", "Ignore", "Edit" tabs at the top do nothing. The "Delete" tab at the top only results in the extraordinarily unhelpful error message "Could not delete item. [OK]"!?!? It's really only an annoyance, but scary, because when Quicken doesn't respond in a sensible way, I worry what else might be going wrong! It's also too bad the previous discussion was closed when there was no successful resolution to the original question! Is that what's going to happen here?

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  • redsnapper
    redsnapper Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    Quicken version:
    Year: 2020
    Version: R25.21
    Build: 27.1.25.21
    So I followed the instructions and installed the patch, after which it said:
    Year: 2020
    Version: R26.21
    Build: 27.1.26.21
    Made the copy as instructed (it did require the Ctrl-Shift to override failure to copy)
    Did first Validate and Repair, but did not use option to "Correct investing price history". Log said it had found and removed a damaged scheduled reminder. (There were actually five that had this problem.)
    Did second SuperValidate operation. No errors reported.

    So the problem is, this was rather Draconian, in that not only were the five non-deletable reminders removed, EVERY one of 72 scheduled reminders was also removed! I now have NO Reminders.

    Since this problem has existed for months, it is completely infeasible to try to find a previous backup that preceded the appearance of the problem. Clearly, it will be easier to manually restore 72 Reminders than to reconstruct months of transactions in a dozen accounts. It's also too bad the "All Bills and Deposits" view doesn't include the account that each reminder uses. Minor oversight on the part of the developers!

    Basically we now have to decide whether we want to live with the fact that there are known corruptions in the database, or let the automated "fixes" stand, not knowing for sure what else may have been lost. For instance, it says it found an error in the Category List ("Fixed damaged category."), but it doesn't say which one was fixed, it just says "Please check your category list". (Check it for what? There are literally hundreds of categories, and I don't know if I'm supposed to be looking for one that's now missing, one that says "fixed", or one that simply looks odd.)

    Anyway, thanks for your assistance.
  • Tonybab
    Tonybab Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    This is what I did and seems to be working for now.
    Update from your back so the current file (file #1) is up to date.
    Make a backup copy of the current file (file #1) so you can restore it back if all else fails.
    Find a back up copy that is not corrupt (file #2). Make note of the last transaction, I deleted all the transactions not reconciled and took note of the last reconciled transaction.
    Open the copy of current file (file #1) and export all transactions from the date noted in file #2 to the last entered transaction (current date) to a ".qif" file.
    Open file #2 and import the exported ".qif" file.
    If all goes well the new file should have all the transactions, be current and not corrupt.
    Now "Ignore" all overdue transactions.
    Now Update from your bank and delete all downloaded transactions as they should be duplicates of what is already in the register.
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