Quicken Cloud and lost backup files

MattK

My Mac mini was having serious performance issues, I used Time Machine to do a full backup, the backup file failed to complete itself and was inaccessible. I didn't verify the backup would work thru Time Machine before I wiped the hard drive, that was one major error of several on my part. So my Quicken file and the backup were gone for good. I did recover 90% of my other files using "recovery" software, but none of the Quicken files could be found. They were probably renamed, which happens when using that recovery software, or corrupted to the point where you'd never know what they originally were.

I did have the "cloud" service and thought that would save me, it didn't. Sure, I can see all the data and accounts, update the registers etc., but I cannot retrieve any of the data. Quicken says that their cloud isn't a "true cloud" where you can recover a file and restore it to back your desktop. They shouldn't use the word "cloud", it's misleading. Not giving up hope, I saw that I could download a CSV from the online account, well that's useless too. Why is that even there? It does nothing, and I can't even choose what kind of file to create for the DL. I cannot import it into my desktop file since it's not from Mint.com. What a joke.

So I'm stuck with an old account that I cannot retrieve and will now have to recreate my ENTIRE account file with all the investments etc from scratch using only what I can see and manually transferring data.

I'm putting this out there as one last effort to find out if there's a workaround to restore my online file back to the desktop. I use Quicken Deluxe.

Quicken_Tyka

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-Quicken Tyka

jacobs

There has not been a way to create a new Quicken file from the data in an associated cloud file, and to the best of my knowledge, this remains the case. Cloud datasets were engineered to be tried to an exclusive Quicken desktop file, and not to be able to replace or re-create a desktop file. It might be possible to build a way to do that with some additional security, but unless Quicken Tyka knows of sone new developments, such capability doesn't exist at this time.

This is a long shot, but have you looked into whether you could take your .csv file and import it into Mint.com? If so, then you might be able to export from Mint.com and import that file into Quicken.  (The problem with .csv files is that there's no defined uniform structure across different personal finance programs. But if you can get the .csv file into Mint, Quicken has built an import around Mint's export.)

I'm sure you're not interested in advice for the future right now, but what happened to you has always been a fear of mine -- my backup fails when I need it most. I actually had this happen to me once, when two different backups failed, and I was fortunate that I had a third backup which worked. So my suggestion for anyone who has irreplaceable data is to have multiple backups. Time Machine is usually reliable, but the sparsebundle format can get corrupted with small hiccups. In addition to Time Machine, I make whole disk backups with SuperDuper, and store the hard drive at work in case of a disaster at my home. Most recently, I added cloud backup with iDrive as an extra layer of protection. But there are simpler options, too, such as making manual Quicken backups periodically and storing them on iCloud, or putting them on a thumb drive.

I hope you have some luck at recovering some of your data without having to start from scratch. Please post back if you find any path to success.