Categories disappeared after upgrading to 27.1.29.12

danglick

Quicken just auto-updated on startup, and several of my custom categories disappeared. They're gone from the category list, and the corresponding transactions show as uncategorized.

As far as I can tell, it seem to be random. E.g. it includes Entertainment > Dining Out, Household > Groceries, and Household > Utilities.

Quicken Anja

Hello @danglick,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community about your issue, though I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing this.

Do you have a recent pre-update backup you can restore? To start with, I suggest restoring a backup file to see if the same issue occurs in the restored file. If needed, please, review this support article. Scroll down until you see Quicken for Windows and open the blue dropdown section(s) titled Restore Quicken data and/or Restore an automatic backup for instructions on how to restore a backup.

Let us know how it goes!

Quicken Anja

Hello @danglick,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community about your issue, though I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing this.

Do you have a recent pre-update backup you can restore? To start with, I suggest restoring a backup file to see if the same issue occurs in the restored file. If needed, please, review this support article. Scroll down until you see Quicken for Windows and open the blue dropdown section(s) titled Restore Quicken data and/or Restore an automatic backup for instructions on how to restore a backup.

Let us know how it goes!

ronaldelsworth

I have a similar issue. Quicken auto-updated to 27.1.29.12 today and I lost 5 months of transactions. No, I don't have a backup. I thought that was taken care of by Quicken Cloud. My research tonight tells me that is not the case. What else can I do?

UKR

ronaldelsworth said:

I have a similar issue. Quicken auto-updated to 27.1.29.12 today and I lost 5 months of transactions. No, I don't have a backup. I thought that was taken care of by Quicken Cloud. My research tonight tells me that is not the case. What else can I do?

Please read the article provided by @Quicken Anja

Quicken may have created automatic backups under the covers that you are not aware of. You may have a relatively recent backup file that you can restore from.

For future reference:
The Quicken cloud is not a backup service. It is exclusively for use with either the Quicken app on your smartphone or the Quicken on the web app.

How to properly set up Quicken Backup
How to make Quicken create a backup for you automatically every time you close Quicken
What Quicken backups are available where?

For the sake of this discussion it is assumed that your Quicken data file is located in the Default (and recommended) place: C:\Users\username\Documents\Quicken

Review the backup settings available in Quicken (under Edit / Preferences / Backup).

In there you will find two types of backup: Automatic and Manual Backup.

Automatic Backup should be enabled and always goes to a \Backup folder that's part of the folder which contains your current Quicken data file, e.g. \Documents\Quicken\Backup. Set it to create a backup after running Quicken [1] times and to keep [9] (or more, your choice) backup copies.
The file name for Automatic Backup files contains a date and time stamp as part of the file name, e.g. QDATA-2020-03-22.PM03.45.QDF-backup

To create a Manual Backup copy of your Quicken data file on an external device (USB-hard drive or USB memory stick recommended), put a checkmark at "Manual Backup Reminder" to enable the function and set "Remind me after running Quicken [xx] times" to [1].

Click OK to save the changes.

From now on, when you close Quicken using the red X button, you will get a popup window.

When you get this window for the first time, on some versions click the radio button for "Backup on my computer".
Change the Backup File name's drive letter and path to point to your external device so that it looks something like this: E:\Quicken Backup\QDATA-2019-04-01.QDF-backup
or use the Change button and work your way through the dialog.

Do not change the filename portion! Just overtype the drive letter and choose a backup folder name. If the folder does not exist, it will be created.

Also choose the option to "Add date to backup file name".

Every day when you run Backup or close Quicken, an additional backup file is created. Without the Add Date option you only have 1 backup copy which is overwritten every day ... and that may prove bad in a problem recovery situation.

Allow this backup to run to save the changes made on the screen.

Of course, once in a while you will have to go in and delete some of the oldest backup files, at your discretion, to avoid filling up your USB device.

One can never have enough backups of a Quicken data file. BTDTGTS!

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @ronaldelsworth

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

If you have not done so already, I would take a moment to review the article above, specifically the section on restoring an automatic backup.

Unless you have removed all previous backups, there should be an automatic backup still available.

If you need assistance locating the automatic backups you consider contacting support.

https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support

Quicken Care can initiate a screen share to help look for the files.

-Quicken Tyka

danglick

Restore from backup did resolve this, thank you!

I hope the root cause can also be found and fixed to avoid this in the future.

Quicken Anja

@danglick thank you for checking back and letting us know!

Glad to hear your issue was resolved.

PatMundy

This same thing just happened to me, apparently last night. I closed Quicken at some point, it wanted to sync to the quicken cloud in the background and I allowed it to do so, and this morning, ALL my custom categories (I have many) are GONE and 95% of my existing transactions are not without category. This is unacceptable. I will restore a recent backup and recreate recent history, but Intuit MUST correct this behavior immediately! It's clearly happening to many of us.

tim.b

Any updates from Quicken? This happens every time I download my transactions... I'm not sure if its caused by their web sync or the download. Yes, I can restore from backup, but then it happens again the next time I download my transactions.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @tim.b

From our testing the issue seemed to have been caused by mobile sync.  The next patch (30.19) will be to address the mobile sync causing categories disappearing.

• Fixed: Resolved an issue that caused categories to disappear after a One Step Update or Mobile/Web Sync.
  

The update should be available in the upcoming days as I believe it is still in the staged release stage. You can try updating it with the mondo patch I'll leave down below.

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco

https://www.quicken.com/support/update-and-patch-20182019-release-quicken-windows-subscription-product