Has anyone else had these experiences?

trudi.cooper44

I'm using the Starter edition and plan to upgrade at my next renewal. Been using Quicken since the 1990s. I don't close the program each time I use it, but keep it open and available.

1. I never get a notification that an update is ready to be installed. How do I know? An entry will not save, so I close the program and open it up again. Then I find out about the update.

2. I always back-up my work to an external hard drive every time I use Quicken. Sometimes I get a completely blank screen after performing the back-up. None of the entries display in the screen I had been using. There is no warning of any sort. That means I need to restore the most recent backup file and re-enter everything I've already entered. This happens more often that I would like, at least a couple of times a month. To say this is frustrating is an understatement.

I never had these issues until Quicken became a stand-alone product, separate from Intuit. I previously used the Deluxe version, and these same weird glitches took place in that version as well.

I wish there were an easier way to contact the company about these issues. I don't find chat to be all that great a tool.

Suggestions, anyone?

Chris_QPW

#1 Quicken checks for updates to the program when starting or when you do One Step Update.  If you do neither then the only way to know is to check every once in a while using Help -> Check for Updates

#1a It not recommended to leave Quicken running all the time.  Startup doesn't take that much time and it increases the risk of data file corruption, not to mention that closing a program and restart will clean up any "states/memory" that might build up over time.  Yes in a perfect world that doesn't happen, but this isn't a perfect world.

#2 If the screen says something like "can't open ..." after a backup.  First try to reopen the file from the File menu.  What is happening is that Quicken closes and releases the lock on the file so that the backup can open it and do the backup.  After that is done the backup closes the file and releases the lock.  And at that point Quicken is suppose to open it again.  But I have definitely seen a "race condition" in this process.  Where the backup will finish, but the lock hasn't been released and Quicken fails to open the data file.  But just doing it from the File menu works, because enough time (probably less than a second) has elapsed.  Note there is another variation on this.  You might have a backup program for your system that waits for changes and runs, it will lock the data file as soon as Quicken quits and can caused the same kind of problems.  The same is true have having your data file in a "cloud folder".

trudi.cooper44

I'm using Windows

Chris_QPW

#1 Quicken checks for updates to the program when starting or when you do One Step Update.  If you do neither then the only way to know is to check every once in a while using Help -> Check for Updates

#1a It not recommended to leave Quicken running all the time.  Startup doesn't take that much time and it increases the risk of data file corruption, not to mention that closing a program and restart will clean up any "states/memory" that might build up over time.  Yes in a perfect world that doesn't happen, but this isn't a perfect world.

#2 If the screen says something like "can't open ..." after a backup.  First try to reopen the file from the File menu.  What is happening is that Quicken closes and releases the lock on the file so that the backup can open it and do the backup.  After that is done the backup closes the file and releases the lock.  And at that point Quicken is suppose to open it again.  But I have definitely seen a "race condition" in this process.  Where the backup will finish, but the lock hasn't been released and Quicken fails to open the data file.  But just doing it from the File menu works, because enough time (probably less than a second) has elapsed.  Note there is another variation on this.  You might have a backup program for your system that waits for changes and runs, it will lock the data file as soon as Quicken quits and can caused the same kind of problems.  The same is true have having your data file in a "cloud folder".

trudi.cooper44

Chris_QPW, thanks for your suggestions. I will close down the program from now on. Hopefully, that will eliminate my other issue as well.