Quicken clobbered my data file password

Rocket J Squirrel

Yesterday, Mrs. Squirrel attempted to use Quicken. She came to me asking whether I'd changed the file password. I had not. I tried, and indeed, the usual password didn't work.

This is both strange and annoying. As far as I know, no Quicken update occurred, or anything else to clobber the password.

Thankfully, the process for resetting the password is now easy via SMS code. I recall once upon a time users had to send their files to Intuit for password removal.

Super-validate revealed no issues and the file seems fine. But this glitch is troubling. This has never happened to me before, but I'm wondering whether it's a known issue and what, if anything, is known about what causes it.

mshiggins

Did you try restoring a recent backup?

Rocket J Squirrel

No, I just reset the password and carried on. Do you think I'm tempting fate by not restoring a backup?

mshiggins

It's been the solution to sudden data file password problems for as long as I can recall. 

Sherlock

It does sound like something strange is happening in your environment:  https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7876011/preferences-reset-to-defaults-in-middle-of-session

Rocket J Squirrel

mshiggins said:

It's been the solution to sudden data file password problems for as long as I can recall. 

True enough. I restored a backup from 2 days ago (in which the original password worked fine).

Sherlock said:

It does sound like something strange is happening in your environment:

Also true. But I have no idea what. I run a pretty vanilla Win10 Pro setup and I try not to not use any Quicken features which have ever been related to reported problems.

If this SIP had occurred in winter, maybe I would have found the motivation to bite the really big bullet and start over with a fresh file. But the weather is beautiful & I'd rather be swimming.

The thing that keeps me from starting a new file is all the investment lots in my portfolio. Typing them all in to retain cost basis would be daunting. It would actually be easier to sell all my securities in the old file, create a new file with just the cash proceeds, and buy all new securities.

GeoffG

An alternative would be to discontinue using a data password for Quicken. I have never trusted and never will the hurdle keeping me from my data. I much prefer and trust a MS login password that secures my PC from data access.

Rocket J Squirrel

Yeah, I never used a data password until the last year or so, when I decided to back up my data to Dropbox (in addition to my other locations). I didn't want to put an unsecured file out in the cloud.

GeoffG

I can appreciate a password if placed on Dropbox. Are you aware of Onedrive's Personal Vault? It allows for an encrypted segment of your Onedrive that is password encrypted and the files within are secure.

Chris_QPW

I think it is interesting that you could recover the file by resetting the password.

In the past where such an operation was such a major undertaking the "standard response" when someone came in with the complaint that their password didn't work, would be "This is an indication of your data file getting corrupted, go to a backup."

The fact that you could just reset the password suggests that maybe in the past the only part "corrupted" was however they save the password information.