Validation should specify what it changed [+32 Merged Votes]

Lisamar

I've noticed Quicken creates an ACCT_57 in my category list after performing the validation function. I can't find any transactions associated with this category. Does anyone know why it does this? I seem to have to validate my data file on a daily basis just to be able to open/use Quicken without it crashing. The validation report states this (below). What does this mean????? No explanation given. So frustrating.

QDF:
Validating your data.
Quicken repaired damaged transaction index. No action required.
Quicken found an invalid transaction and removed it. "ACCT_587" 0/ 0/1900
Quicken repaired some transaction information. No action required.
"ACCT_587" 0/ 0/1900

Summary:
Quicken repaired 1 accounts. No action required.

Ken Derrenbacker

It seems clear that Quicken is not listening. Why? Is it really that tough to get a verbose listing of the error? The validation clearly found something wrong why not include what it was in the log file?

Pumphouse

Seems like it should be straightforward, but I suspect it is really tough to do. The following is my opinion after 35+ years of software engineering working on large applications built over database engines. Also, I've been using Quicken almost as long, starting with the DOS (not WIndows) version.

The code is probably really old. And the database engine is not SQL, it's likely proprietary. And may be tricky, since in those days readability of code was often sacrificed for performance.

My suspicion is that no one at Quicken knows the database code level well and they are simply afraid to do too much in it (with good reason). It's probable every time you touch it, something seemingly unrelated breaks. (I'm not blaming anyone at Quicken. This happens to all old software of any size and complexity. Mea culpa,)

Note that the Mac version is based on SQLPlus. So they can get programmers who know the DB technology and how to extend and debug it. I speculate that this PC need will only be addressed if they backport the Mac version to the PC.

Ken Derrenbacker

I thought they did a complete re-write they bought it from Intuit?

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20353067#Comment_20353067

No that's completely untrue. Basically the only thing that happened during the transition from Intuit to Quicken Inc was what was absolutely necessary for changing over the servers and such.

Since that time they've made a lot of changes for this and that especially for the financial institutions changing the way they want download transactions and and features, but I suspect very very little of the core software having to do with the database has actually been changed.

And on this topic I think one of the main problems are that errors are reported at a low level but bubbled up to the higher level before their actually turned into messages. So in other words by the time the error routines get them they probably don't even really know exactly what went wrong

Ken Derrenbacker

Well, that's disappointing. So, you're telling us there never will be a solution to this problem?

Quicken Jasmine

Hello All,

The status of this Idea has been changed to Under Consideration as it has reached enough votes and has been submitted to our Product and Development team for further review.

Thank you!

Chris_QPW

Quicken sucks, plain & simple. They put more development resources & urgency toward implementing a Paid Subscription model than they've put toward application stability in the last 10 years.

What proof of this do you have?

Just because they haven't been able to get the stability that you might want doesn't mean that they haven't put the resources towards that goal.

And that is the problem with your whole statement. There isn't one "actionable" statement in it.

A statement like "fix the program" is useless.

What's more your generalizations on the stability of the program/data aren't accurate:

This also begs the question, *Who cares about buggy & unreliable financial institution integration when everything that's downloaded or manually entered quickly gets corrupted anyway!?". Anybody care to take a stab @ that Pandora's Box?

Do you really supposed that Quicken would still be in business if it worked that way for the majority of people?

I don't use some of the more problematic features like Web/Mobile or Bill Pay or even some of the flaky financial institutions, and I haven't had any serious download/corruption problems in many many years.

And I know that I'm not alone in this. If you have ever been on here when a popular financial institution's download breaks you would know that it gets hundreds of posts in a very short period of time. Clearly a large amount of financial institution downloading is happening at any given time with no problems. And to the corruption side of this, yes it happens, but much rarer than you imply, and this thread is about making it clear what was changed, not some random rant with vague assumptions with your pushing your views as if they are what everyone is experiencing.

And your statements about "useless features", is also off base. There are very few features I can think of that I haven't seen Quicken users requesting. Just because you don't want a given feature doesn't mean it is useless to the Quicken user base.

keithcnj

I've been having this same "xxx damaged scheduled transactions deleted" for years. It still randomly causes Quicken to hang when clicking on the BILLS & INCOME tab, but seems much worse with the latest (R52.20) build. If I run validation again after re-starting the program, it says the same thing, so it's obviously NOT actually removing the damaged transactions. I suspect this started maybe 10 years ago, when I scheduled a payment from one of my banks and forgot to put an expiration on it. It never really deleted it, even when I changed it at the bank. The severity of the issue comes and goes with releases.

Chris_QPW

@GreatDrivr I never said that there aren't problems or said you don't have any. You made the claim that the developers have not spent any time on making Quicken more stable without any proof. That is all I said.

And for the record bugs in their subscription have cost them, but not in the way you said. People have tried to pay for a subscription and failed, and given up and got their money back. Your assumption that bugs don't happen when it isn't in their favor is ridiculous. They are bugs for the very reason that things don't go as planned and I see no evidence that Quicken Inc plans for people to have problems with their software or to have corrupted data files.

Chris_QPW

My answers:

Almost never.

There isn't any prompt in the program it is purely a choice made by the user. The only time I actually have used it is because of running it to test something that someone on here has reported. A few times it has said that it fixed things, but in I have never seen a direct effect on anything in Quicken for me, but certainly it has been reported to fix some things for some people. Note not surprisingly it has also been reported in rare times to cause damage. By its nature, I expect that.

Sort of answered the last question above, but I will also state that some people feel that it allows them to catch "corruption" sooner.

Rocket J Squirrel

@Chris_QPW

some people feel that it allows them to catch "corruption" sooner.

I am one of those people. Call it superstition if you like. I perform prophylactic validations about once a month. Because no one knows what validation actually does under the covers, it may be cleaning things up vewy vewy quietly.

I usually copy my data file to a second PC and validate it there, just in case something goes wrong. If everything looks good, I'll validate on my production PC next. The equivalent could be performed simply by validating a Windows copy of the file.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

The status of this Idea has been changed to Planned as it has been accepted by our Product and Development team for future implementation. Quicken's product development teams do not provide an estimate of when new/enhanced features will be completed and released.

Thank you

Randy 415

Hey, if we can get validation to actually fix all the problems, that would be great. I have had to "copy" all my data from one file to another to "fix" problems. Also, if validation can determine the real core issue and send a report to PD, that might generate some internal fixes and put Validation out of business. Of course, Validation will always be needed because of HD and OS stability causing data corruption.

rcfritts

Apologies in advance for the length, but I've finally decided to post something here in the hopes it might get noticed.

I occasionally check here for an answer to the question of how to know what was done when I do a Super Validate and receive a "1 scheduled transactions corrected" (sic) message in the log file. I get this message about 95% of the time I run validations. It sounds like maybe the devs will finally be looking at enhancing the validation process. That's great.

But I see above a lot of unfocused anger above about the quality of Quicken and a number of responses essentially saying you need specifics in order to gripe. Having had my share of issues, I thought I might provide some concrete feedback about my experiences.

A little background….I've been using Quicken since version 6 on Windows 95 and am now running a Deluxe subscription version (R53.32 presently) on Windows 10 x64. In my experience, Quicken is very buggy (more later), but I continue to use it since I depend on the ability to connect to about a dozen financial institutions for downloads and updates. Unfortunately, no other solution I've seen can do everything I use Quicken for, so I've put up with the various problems. But if I could find a viable alternative, I would likely switch.

Back to the current thread….many years ago, my Quicken file became corrupted. I received no indication at the time that it had happened nor did I even have any good idea as to how long it had been corrupted prior to my noticing it during one of my (then) rare validation runs. I spent quite a bit of time (several days) and effort restoring my system since the validation left it in chaos. I NEVER want to be in that same position again. So since then, being the super-cautious user that I now am, every single time I do any work in Quicken, I save a backup when I'm done, then run a super validation, then do another backup. What that means is that I validate my file constantly and have LOTS of backups. So far that has worked and, fortunately, I haven't had any more corruption problems. But at least I'll know immediately if any new corruption sneaks in. Also, I do still encounter lots of bugs every time I use Quicken (again, details below for those interested).

That all said, as I mentioned above, about 95% of the time, validations report "1 scheduled transactions corrected" (sic) with no guidance or indication of what scheduled transaction was fixed. Worse, it doesn't actually fix it, since the message persists with almost every validation. I look forward to the devs releasing an improved log so I can identify and fix persistent errors.

If you've made it this far and are interested, what follows is a partial list of bugs I encounter in Quicken. I've reported several of them directly to the support desk via phone, spent hours debugging with them, and had them logged. But not one has ever been fixed:

1. Whenever I run a one-step update, a Quicken dialog opens prompting me for a password to set up the password vault. I have never activated or used the vault in Quicken, nor do I want to use the vault. The Tools menu shows the vault is not active by greying out all choices except "Set up new Password Vault…". Nobody at Quicken support has been able to figure out why it's happening and how to stop it. The only commonality is that it seems to only happen with online payees using Direct Connect instead of Express Web Connect.
2. In the vast majority of cases, when I schedule an online payment with my bank, the Write Checks dialog does not fill in the Bill Pay address field even though the selected online payee does have an address entered (which I can see if I click the "Edit Address…" button in the dialog). I can manually add the address but Quicken will not fill it out, nor does it remember it for next time (see next items).
3. Related to the previous, Quicken sometimes remembers changes to transactions memorized from the Write Checks dialog, but mostly does not. For example, when paying a credit card bill, I enter the credit card number in the Memo field. Quicken does not remember it for the next payment. Or when I lost a card and was issued a new one with a different number, I couldn't get that to be memorized either (it still defaults to an old Amex number in the memo field - one which I can't find in any memorized transaction anywhere in Quicken, so I can't even delete it).
4. Again related to the previous, Memorized transactions not involving the Write Checks dialog also randomly do not update when I change the values from the previous use.
5. On several occasions, when I void a transaction from the Edit menu, it voids the transaction immediately following the one I selected to void. I have to manually fix the now-voided good transaction and then try to void the correct one again.
6. The UI goes blank randomly. Last week, when I first launched Quicken, it seemed to come up normally with my checking account selected, except the register had nothing in it. It was completely empty. Switching accounts did not help. I had to close and re-start Quicken. Something like this happens roughly once every month or so.

And before it comes up, with regard to items 2, 3, and 4, I have tried deleting the memorized transactions, online payees, and address book entries and then setting them up again from scratch (several times) - no joy.

I've kept a log of the bugs I've encountered over the years. The list above is only about half of the items I track. But I think you get the idea - I've reported these and have never received a fix or workaround to address any of them. Since I am a Product Manager in the software industry myself, you can imagine why I am amazed at the overall poor testing process they must have in place.

Anyway, there's my rant for this year. I do hope they at least come up with an enhanced log so I can finally address that stubborn "1 scheduled transactions corrected". From where I come from, you should be able to get to a clean validation log every time.

Chris_QPW

@rcfritts said:

 But at least I'll know immediately if any new corruption sneaks in. 

No, you won't. This is a fallacy that some people have.

1. Validate and Super Validate, do not catch all problems. Therefore, at best you would have to state it as you "might" be notified that a problem has corrupted your data file.
2. Validate and Super Validate are "code" too. It is certainly possible to have bugs in that code that corrupts data.
3. Validate and Super Validate don't ensure a problem free data file, at best they ensure a "consistent" data file. For instance, it finds a link that isn't consistent and deletes it. This can mean that now your data file is consistent with data removed.
4. As you saw when your data file was corrupted before Validate and Super Validate and make the problem worse. There is a reason why the developers choose to always make a backup of your data file before doing the Validate. It is a risky operation, and they know it.

rcfritts

@Chris_QPW…All valid points. Unfortunately, those are the only tools Quicken has ever provided to work on my issues (and yes, I've also tried copying the DB to a new one), so I have nothing else to throw at the problems.

That said, as someone who manages and works with software developers and code/data designers myself, I have to agree with everything you say. However, from my perspective, that simply increases my stupefication that the logs aren't more clear and complete. As you point out, performing any data maintenance can always introduce new issues. It's ALWAYS crucial to log exactly what is happening (and by that I mean everything that is happening) so it can be addressed/fixed/whatever if something goes wrong.

But my main point is still that I have found Quicken support to be a flaming waste of time. No matter how I report things, no matter how much detail and replication instructions I provide, and no matter how many hours of testing I do for them (and it's been a lot over the years), I have yet to see a single response or update on any of my topics that solved or addressed any of my issues.

Chris_QPW

@rcfritts I totally agree on the need for logging everything and in a clear manner. In fact, I was probably the first one that ever voted this idea up.

And yeah, outside of maybe the developers (and maybe even not there) which we as users don't have access to, Quicken Inc treats the whole thing as a big black box, full of black magic. Sort of reminds me of the old "If Windows is having a problem, reboot." Validate is pointed out as depression not a true understanding of what it can and can't fix.

dsmith5769

I have been having this problem "Quicken found a damaged scheduled reminder and removed it." for several months. It allows me to work in quicken during this opening of quicken, but the next time, I have to run validate again and get the same response. I reached out to Quicken help and was told I have to purchase a special program costing $600. I decided to deal with the problem but this should be fixed by quicken. As you can see, the problem persists for many costumers.

Jim_Harman

@dsmith5769

Genuine Quicken Customer Support is always free if you have a current subscription, and I have never heard of them offering any tools for sale.

To reach genuine service, use the links in Quicken at Help > Contact Support.

If you Google Quicken Support or anything like that, chances are you will reach a scammer who takes your money and does not offer any real support.