Major bug: categories changed to indecipherable text & syncing cloud data fails

Scott Rose

So here is a major bug with Quicken Mac.

I'm using Quicken Version 5.16.1 (Build 516.33903.100) on macOS 10.15.5.

I wanted to cleanup my Categories a bit. So, I went into the Categories window and decided to "Add Default Categories". Then, I merged a bunch of categories, created some new subcategories, and generally did some nice cleanup.

Everything was fine for several hours, until I decided to "Update All Online Accounts".

After doing that, it told me that I needed to Reset Quicken Cloud because the sync failed.

I tried to reset Quicken Cloud, but resetting the Quicken Cloud failed, because Quicken gave me over 100 "Category Sync Error sayings" that said that "Quicken had a problem syncing this category: DUMMY_<indecipherable text>".

Then, I went into my list of Categories, and a ton of my Category Names had been changed into <indecipherable text>!

Luckily, all but one of those categories were unused, so I just chose the option to "Remove Unused Categories". 

I was left with only one category at this point:

<Indecipherable text> was the category name, and "Charity" was the Subcategory.

I used to have my own category called "Charity" (with no subcategories at all), but now it had moved "Charity" into a subcategory underneath <indecipherable text>. 

I moved the new "Charity" subcategory into another category, and deleted the <indecipherable text> category. And now I'm left with only valid categories.

Then, I went to Reset Quicken Cloud, and it seemed to work.

Now, when I choose "Update All Online Accounts", it seems to work.

So anyways, it seems to be working for the time being, but this is definitely a bug happening here. And I'm worried that this bug will happen again, the next time I try to "Add Default Categories".

Quicken Anja

Hello @Scott Rose,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about your issue, though I apologize that you experienced this.

However, I am glad to hear that you were able to resolve this on your own and want to inform you that I have forwarded your post to have the issue looked into, just in case.

Also, I do want to inform you that we did release version 5.17 for Quicken for Mac on 04/02/2020. You may want to install the update if it's been made available to you and see if that makes a difference. You can check if it's available by going to Quicken > Check for Updates. Please, see this support article if you would like to review the version's Release Notes prior to installing.

If you would like to test the issue after installing the update, I recommend saving a backup of your data file first, just in case the issue does reoccur when trying to Add Default Categories again.

Let us know if you have any questions!

Quicken Anja

Hello @Scott Rose,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about your issue, though I apologize that you experienced this.

However, I am glad to hear that you were able to resolve this on your own and want to inform you that I have forwarded your post to have the issue looked into, just in case.

Also, I do want to inform you that we did release version 5.17 for Quicken for Mac on 04/02/2020. You may want to install the update if it's been made available to you and see if that makes a difference. You can check if it's available by going to Quicken > Check for Updates. Please, see this support article if you would like to review the version's Release Notes prior to installing.

If you would like to test the issue after installing the update, I recommend saving a backup of your data file first, just in case the issue does reoccur when trying to Add Default Categories again.

Let us know if you have any questions!