OFXLog.txt log file: is it supposed to keep a history of downloaded credit card transactions (Q Mac)

Just Lurking
Just Lurking Mac Beta Beta
Because it only seems to contain checking and investment transactions.

The reason behind my question:
While reconciling an account balance discrepancy, I discovered two credit card payments which show up as duplicated in my Quicken credit card account, resulting in Quicken reporting a negative balance.

It's a BofA credit card connected via Quicken Connect. Quicken for Mac 6.01 on an Intel Mac running Catalina. I already contacted support and they had me connect the account to a test file, but the duplicate transactions are too old and thus were not downloaded to the test file. They had no other ideas other than to delete the duplicates which I will do, but would like to peek under the hood a little bit and see if I can troubleshoot a bit further first.

Thank you.
Tagged:

Best Answer

  • lhossus
    lhossus SuperUser, Mac Beta ✭✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    In Quicken for Mac, the Quicken Connect download activity gets recorded in the HTTPLog.txt file (along with a lot of other stuff). In my case this log contains only very recent activity (last 7 days) - the file seems to have been simply trimmed at the arbitrary file size of 5 MB ... because the first lines start in the middle of a transmission (the beginning is missing).

    The OFXLog.txt contains download activity related to Direct Connect.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • macOS Monterey 12.6 on MacBook Pro 13" M1

Answers

  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    I don't know about Quicken Mac but just recently Quicken Windows has been changing over to using QCS for Express Web Connect, which is the equivalent of Quicken Mac's "Quicken Connect".  And for that the transactions are no longer being logged in the OFX log, they are now in the "cloud sync" log.  Because QCS is in fact using the same syncing between the data file and the the Quicken cloud account as Mobile/Web is using.  So it might be the same on the Mac where you need to look in a "cloud sync" log if the Mac has such a thing.
    Signature:
    This is my website: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/
  • Just Lurking
    Just Lurking Mac Beta Beta
    Chris_QPW said:
    I don't know about Quicken Mac but just recently Quicken Windows has been changing over to using QCS for Express Web Connect, which is the equivalent of Quicken Mac's "Quicken Connect".  And for that the transactions are no longer being logged in the OFX log, they are now in the "cloud sync" log.  Because QCS is in fact using the same syncing between the data file and the the Quicken cloud account as Mobile/Web is using.  So it might be the same on the Mac where you need to look in a "cloud sync" log if the Mac has such a thing.
    Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately there's nothing that matches that description in my "log files" folder (the one that opens when I select the Quicken Help menu and then "Show logs"). There are only three log files which have updated within the last two years:
    • HTTPLog.txt
    • ConnLog.txt
    • OFXLog.txt
    I even tried creating a diagnostic report which bundles up several log files into a .zip, but there's no cloud-related log file in there either, unfortunately.

  • lhossus
    lhossus SuperUser, Mac Beta ✭✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    In Quicken for Mac, the Quicken Connect download activity gets recorded in the HTTPLog.txt file (along with a lot of other stuff). In my case this log contains only very recent activity (last 7 days) - the file seems to have been simply trimmed at the arbitrary file size of 5 MB ... because the first lines start in the middle of a transmission (the beginning is missing).

    The OFXLog.txt contains download activity related to Direct Connect.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • macOS Monterey 12.6 on MacBook Pro 13" M1
  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    @Just Lurking said:
    ... would like to peek under the hood a little bit and see if I can troubleshoot a bit further first.
    You might want to be careful. One just never knows what you'll find when you peek under the hood ...

    :wink:
  • Just Lurking
    Just Lurking Mac Beta Beta
    lhossus said:
    In Quicken for Mac, the Quicken Connect download activity gets recorded in the HTTPLog.txt file (along with a lot of other stuff). In my case this log contains only very recent activity (last 7 days) - the file seems to have been simply trimmed at the arbitrary file size of 5 MB ... because the first lines start in the middle of a transmission (the beginning is missing).

    The OFXLog.txt contains download activity related to Direct Connect.
    Thank you for this guidance. I was prepared to restore an older backed up log file to examine the transactions that I'm interested in, but that doesn't seem to be necessary. Interestingly, while my file also appears to start "in media res", my file is much larger (>30mb) and it appears to capture the older transactions that I'm examining.

    I'm finding the format of this file very noisy, however, and harder to decipher than the OFXLog. I'm going to look at it a little longer and then perhaps post a few snippets here in case some kind soul(s) can help validate my understanding.
This discussion has been closed.