nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Need help recovering a QMac 2015 file with 16 years worth of data please!

Pub

My iMac died on July 11th. My quicken files were backed up with Time Machine for many months. I now have a new iMac and OS Catalina 10.15.4 so, going forward, none of my old softwares will work. I have just purchased Quicken 2020 subscription but I am unable to open any of the data files that I have.

jacobs, @jacobs had an amazing paragraph in a post (discussion/7856348) that I saved: "A Quicken data file is actually a type of Mac file called a "package", which is a simple wrapper around files and folders to make the whole collection look like a single file. Hold down the Control key and click once on the file. A pop-up menu will appear, and near the top of the menu, select "Show Package Contents". That will result in a Finder window with a number of files and Folders. One file sting there is "data" -- this is your actual Quicken database file."

I have found a file called "data" in a Quicken "package" folder from July 10, one day before my computer crashed. I have the file on a flash card. I have had no luck importing or opening this file. I have spent the best part of 2 days on the phone with Quicken with no luck. I need to know if it is possible to save and access the information in this file.

Thank you for any help I can get.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Pub

This is the error message I get: An error occurred during persistent store migration.

Pub

I used Quicken 2015 and I have the Time Machine backups on an external hard drive and a new iMac with MacOS Catalina and a Quicken 2020 subscription but I have a hard time finding the correct and most recent Quicken data file on my Time Machine backup. My old/dead iMac worked beautifully and Quicken opened with no problems up to July 11, 2020! But now that I need to restore from my Time Machine backup I can't find the right and most recent data files. And any file that I try to open gives me this error: An error occurred during persistent store migration.

jacobs

[EDITED] I originally read the post to say the old data file was Quicken 2005, not Quicken 2015. My mistake and apologies. I've removed my reply relating to the steps involved in opening a Quicken 2005 data file.

Greg_the_Geek

@jacobs, the OP posted they were using Quicken 2015 and not 2005.

Pub

@Greg_the_Geek and @jacobs, Yes my latest lost data is in Quicken 2015. Also I do have an old MacBook with Quicken 2007 running on it. Could that help me with my 2015 files?

GeoffG

[deleted]

jacobs

Wow! Sorry, I misread by a decade! Now the persistent store error makes more sense, as that's an error with the database used by modern Quicken Mac.

@Pub You should not need to be digging into the Quicken 2015 data file package to extract the actual database file. It sounds like the data file you are trying to open from a day before your Mac died may be damaged, and I'm not aware of any way to recover from the persistent store error. If you spent hours with Quicken Support on this file to no avail, it may be a dead end. But you should hopefully be able to locate older copies on your Time Machine.

Assuming you hadn't moved your data file from Quicken's default location, it's a little tricky to find. In the Finder, hold down the Option key and select Library from the Go menu. within the Library window, double click on Application Support. You should see a file in there called Quicken, which is where your new Quicken 2020 data files and backups would go -- but don't open it. With your Time Machine drive running, now enter Time Machine. You should be in the Application Support folder. Go back in Time Machine to July 10 before your crash. You should now be seeing a Quicken 2015 folder there. Click on it and restore that folder,. You can then exit Time Machine.

On your Mac, again in the Application Support folder, you should now see both a Quicken folder and a Quicken 2015 folder. Open the Quicken 2015 folder. There are two folders in there to be interested in. Inside the Documents folder should be your most recent Quicken data file(s). Inside the Backups folder should more your most recent backups if you ever used "Save a Backup" Quicken 2015. (Unfortunately, Quicken 2015 did not have automatic backups which were added in subsequent versions.)

DO NOT try to open any of these Quicken or Quicken Backup files yet. Make a COPY of them by dragging to your desktop. (This will leave the restored data files untouched if anything doesn't work.) Now, launch Quicken 2020 and if you're not on the Let's Get Started page, go to File > New and select "Start from a Quicken 2015, 2016, or 2017 file". Navigate to the Quicken 2015 data file you dragged to your desktop and select it. Quicken should then import your data into a Quicken 2020 data file.

Pub

@jacobs thanks you so much for your help so far. I am really grateful. I have a few problems following your directions:

1- I had actually moved the my data file from Quicken's default to a folder called Accounts in my documents folder. I am assuming this is ok as long as I have the file on my backup drive.

2- When I went to enter time machine to restore the 2015 data file, as you suggested, Time Machine had already started backing up my new Mac and I couldn't get it to switch to the other backup from my old Mac to go to July 10! I tried stopping Time Machine backups of my new mac and trashed the folder and restarted my mac and I can see all the backup folders going back to 2016 but entering Time Machine doesn't bring them up.

3- As nothing seemed to work, I navigated to the data file in one of the folders and manually copied it to my desktop and followed the rest of your instructions to see if that might work but I got the same persistent store error!

4- I am also having some permission problems with many of my folders as apparently I should not have changed my admin password. Could this be the reason Quicken is not opening my files?

Thank you again.

jacobs

@Pub I'm sorry, but your questions about Time Machine after switching it to your new Mac go beyond my expertise with Time Machine. It depends whether you "inherited" the old backup or started new. This article might give you some insight:

http://www.creativetechsupport.com/help/it/install/timemachine-inherit.html

I don't want to try to give you more direction here so I don't endanger your data. Working with Time Machine is an Apple question, so since you have a new Mac, you should be able to get help from Apple Support.

As for your other questions: (1) If you had moved your Quicken data to a different folder, m that shouldn't be a problem at all. The only possible problem is if you have enabled iCloud Drive to store your Desktop and Documents folders on iCloud instead of on your local Mac. This can result in problems with Quicken file permissions. If you have this turned off, then it's not an issue. (4) I don't know, but it could be. Unfortunately, once file permissions get messed up with a Quicken data file, I have never seen anyone document a way to fix them. If you have any backup files that you manually generated from within Quicken using the Save A Backup command, those should still work, because they are compressed in a way that preserves the file permissions inside the package file. You can search your data for any files with a ".quicken2015backup" extension.

Pub

@jacobs, here is an update:

I have been on the phone with Apple for 2 days and as it was assumed that my problems were related to permissions, Apple finally recommended erasing the mac entirely and doing a brand new install. This took about 12 hours on Friday. After the install all my files were restored from my backup following @jacobs instructions.

I was very excited and I waited up to see if I could finally open and recover my Quicken 2015 data file. Unfortunately that was not the case. I got the same error "An error occurred during persistent store migration".

One thing that I noticed was this error message at the end of installation: "System Extension Blocked" A program tried to load new system extensions...
I has Little Snitch app installed on my old mac. I suspect this might be the source of my troubles.

By the way, even though all my documents are unlocked and I don't think I have any permission issue, I can't enter time machine as it now sees only the very latest files that were created since yesterday!

jacobs

Unfortunately, you probably need to access your old Time Machine files to find an old enough Quicken 2015 data file that will update/import correctly into Quicken 2020. It sounds like the one you've been trying to use was corrupted, and I don't know how to work around that. I don't know whether they still exist or have now been wiped out.

Pub

@jacobs I have finally been able to access my old Time Machine data thanks to my old MacBook and this paragraph on cnet:

The ability to browse "other" backups is a feature that is available in Time Machine, but is not apparent to users. In order to access this feature, users should attach the Time Machine drive to the second computer, and then hold the options key and select the Time Machine menu from the system menu. There should be the option to "Browse Other Time Machine Disks", which should bring up a list of available Time Machine backup volumes. Users can then access their backed up files from the new computer. This feature is also available by right-clicking the Time Machine dock icon.

I have restored and tried about 9 different backups and I have tried different ways of opening the files and I still get the same error every single time! "An error occurred during persistent store migration"

I just want to remind that my Quicken worked perfectly until July 11. Whatever happened was caused by either 1-Time Machine, 2- the migration process or 3- Catalina!

jacobs

I'm glad you figured out how to access your old Time Machine data from the old Mac.

The only way to open a Quicken 2015 data file in Quicken 2020 is to go to File > New and on the Let's Get Started page, select that you're starting from a Quicken 2015, 2016 or 2017 file. I assume you've been doing this, right?

I'm afraid I'm out of ideas. I can't think of a reason why a working Quicken 2015 data file wouldn't import correctly to Quicken 2020 on Catalina. @John_in_NC @RickO do you have any other suggestions to try?

Pub

Hello again @jacobs I am reporting SUCCESS!!!!!

The process was so confusing and so long over so many sleepless nights that I am not sure I can accurately report how it worked. But basically after I was able to reach my older backups files on an old MacBook, I put the 2015 data file on a flash card.

I had another brand new wrapped iMac with Catalina sitting in a box that I had to return to Apple because the base came damaged. I opened this iMac and set it up but did not import or migrate anything. I just connected it to wifi and downloaded my new Quicken 2020 app.

Then I imported my 2015 data file with your instruction and this time it opened with no issues. I also did a manual backup and an export just in case.

Then I put all these new file on the flash card and took it to my new mac where Quicken was running and I just had to open my new .quicken file!!!

I am very very happy and I hope it continues to work...

@jacobs, I want to thank you again for your kindness and patience. Hope you get it back 10 fold.

Now I have to go figure out what to do about all my other files and applications that won't work with Catalina!

jacobs

Yay! I'm glad you got the Quicken 2015 data file converted. Good luck with migrating your other apps and data to the new Mac.