In Sept 2019 Quicken lost thousands of transactions in 2 credit card accounts. How to restore?

V Levy

Preparing 2019 taxes this month (May 2020) and reviewing my past-year spending, to my alarm I see that in two credit card accounts that I have been using for years, the earliest transaction date is now in August 2019. Trickery from filtering and sorting has been ruled out, including by running itemized spending reports on these accounts including all dates. How did this happen and how can I recover my transactions from my backups?

In my backup software, I am able to look at every prior version of my QDF (Quicken) file, and I see that up to and including the .QDF file on August 29 2019, transactions both of these accounts go back many years. The next version of the QDF is from September 15 2019, and the transactions prior to August 2019 are missing in that file and in subsequent versions up to the current date. It appears that in either August 2019 or in September 2019, all transactions prior to September 2019 were removed. These accounts are both enabled for one-step update, but I would hope that this Quicken feature would not allow deletion of any records, let alone thousands. And another credit card account also using 1SU was not similarly stricken.

Assuming I am correct in concluding that the transactions are really gone from my current Quicken file, how can I restore the missing credit card transactions from the old versions? (So thankful for backups!) From the old Quicken file I have copied the deleted transactions to the clipboard with Edit/Transaction/Copy transaction(s), but when I open the new file and enter the credit card account the Edit/Transactions/Paste transaction(s) menu option is disabled. Quicken does not allow both Quicken files to be open at the same time. It will be very difficult for me to start with my Quicken file from August 2019 and rebuild it to the present time, and since I don't know how the transactions were deleted, I don't know how to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks for any help.

Sherlock

It's really difficult to imagine how you managed not notice transactions were missing for so many months.   To detect such an issue sooner, I suggest you reconcile your registers monthly against statements obtained from the financial institutions.

To restore the transactions to the current file, I suggest you export the missing transactions from the backup file in QIF format and then import the QIF files into the current file:

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-export-data-quicken
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-import-data-quicken-windows

Sherlock

V Levy said:

Thanks @Sherlock , I tried the technique you recommended, but although it restored all of my missing credit card transactions, it destroyed the balance in my main checking account, which is worse than missing old credit card transactions. It's not clear to me why importing to a credit account would affect my checking account.

When I exported the credit card accounts from the backup, I exported twice, once for each of the two accounts, and when I imported the .QIF files, in the "Quicken account to import into," I selected the applicable credit card account. The checking account balance was affected when importing both with and without selecting the option for special handling for transfers.

You likely paid the credit cards using the checking account.  You should be able to locate and correct the transfer transactions.  

splasher

Sherlock said:

V Levy said:

Thanks @Sherlock , I tried the technique you recommended, but although it restored all of my missing credit card transactions, it destroyed the balance in my main checking account, which is worse than missing old credit card transactions. It's not clear to me why importing to a credit account would affect my checking account.

When I exported the credit card accounts from the backup, I exported twice, once for each of the two accounts, and when I imported the .QIF files, in the "Quicken account to import into," I selected the applicable credit card account. The checking account balance was affected when importing both with and without selecting the option for special handling for transfers.

You likely paid the credit cards using the checking account.  You should be able to locate and correct the transfer transactions.  

In looking for the transactions that Sherlock mentions, make sure that the checking account is sorted by date and then look for the payments.  You will want to delete the ones that are NOT transfers to the credit card account.  If you delete one of those, you will be deleting the matching transaction in the CC account and then mess it up.

Be sure to make a safety backup for doing any of this.

Sherlock

It's really difficult to imagine how you managed not notice transactions were missing for so many months.   To detect such an issue sooner, I suggest you reconcile your registers monthly against statements obtained from the financial institutions.

To restore the transactions to the current file, I suggest you export the missing transactions from the backup file in QIF format and then import the QIF files into the current file:

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-export-data-quicken
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-import-data-quicken-windows

V Levy

Thanks @Sherlock , I tried the technique you recommended, but although it restored all of my missing credit card transactions, it destroyed the balance in my main checking account, which is worse than missing old credit card transactions. It's not clear to me why importing to a credit account would affect my checking account.

When I exported the credit card accounts from the backup, I exported twice, once for each of the two accounts, and when I imported the .QIF files, in the "Quicken account to import into," I selected the applicable credit card account. The checking account balance was affected when importing both with and without selecting the option for special handling for transfers.

NotACPA

You don't need to run "itemized spending reports" to catch this issue ... just reconcile your account every month.

The Beginning Balance for this month SHOULD be the ending balance for last month ... otherwise the account won't reconcile ... and you would have seen the problem immediately. 

Missing transactions would cause the prior month ending balance to not agree with this month's beginning balance on the statement.  They're calculated figures ... not stored figures.

Sherlock

V Levy said:

Thanks @Sherlock , I tried the technique you recommended, but although it restored all of my missing credit card transactions, it destroyed the balance in my main checking account, which is worse than missing old credit card transactions. It's not clear to me why importing to a credit account would affect my checking account.

When I exported the credit card accounts from the backup, I exported twice, once for each of the two accounts, and when I imported the .QIF files, in the "Quicken account to import into," I selected the applicable credit card account. The checking account balance was affected when importing both with and without selecting the option for special handling for transfers.

You likely paid the credit cards using the checking account.  You should be able to locate and correct the transfer transactions.  

splasher

Sherlock said:

V Levy said:

Thanks @Sherlock , I tried the technique you recommended, but although it restored all of my missing credit card transactions, it destroyed the balance in my main checking account, which is worse than missing old credit card transactions. It's not clear to me why importing to a credit account would affect my checking account.

When I exported the credit card accounts from the backup, I exported twice, once for each of the two accounts, and when I imported the .QIF files, in the "Quicken account to import into," I selected the applicable credit card account. The checking account balance was affected when importing both with and without selecting the option for special handling for transfers.

You likely paid the credit cards using the checking account.  You should be able to locate and correct the transfer transactions.  

In looking for the transactions that Sherlock mentions, make sure that the checking account is sorted by date and then look for the payments.  You will want to delete the ones that are NOT transfers to the credit card account.  If you delete one of those, you will be deleting the matching transaction in the CC account and then mess it up.

Be sure to make a safety backup for doing any of this.

V Levy

@Sherlock @splasher Seeing your latest posts, I read them carefully and began to understand the situation: some of my credit card payments must have been linked to my checking account, although I did not remember doing that. Opening the backup file, sure enough, of the hundreds of historical payments on those credit cards, a few were linked to the checking account. What I did was sort by payee so that all the payments were together, then it was easy to spot which ones were linked to the checking account. I changed the Category field in each of the linked payments from [Transfer to Checking] to “Credit card payment,” so all payments had that category. Then I exported each credit card account to .QIF and imported them in the current Quicken file. My transactions are restored and my checking balance is correct, because of your help. Thank you!

splasher

While you can do it any way you want to, the suggested practice is to make the payment from checking to CC a transfer where the category is the other account's name in [ ].  By doing it this way, you do not double count expenses. 
Doing it your way, you have your checking account payment to CC AND you have the individual transactions in the CC account.
When done as a transfer, you can tell Quicken to ignore  (not include) the transfers in all of your reports.
That CC payment is not a true expense, it is just moving $ from one pocket that has money to another pocket that owes money, but overall, your networth did not change.

V Levy

@Sherlock @splasher Thanks to you both, my credit transactions are now restored and my checking balance is correct. From carefully reading what both of you wrote, I understood that there must be credit card transactions that were linked to my checking account, although I did not remember doing it. Sure enough, in the backup file, of the hundreds of historical payments on these credit cards, a few were linked to the checking account. What I did was change the category of these few from [Transfer to Checking] to "Credit card payment" like the rest of my payments. Then I exported each credit account to a .QIF and imported them in my current Quicken file. This time, after importing, the checking balance was not affected. With your help I am in balance once more. Thank you!