Quicken not retaining file

Tina86

I have been using Quicken Home and Business 2017 for a while now and everything has work smoothly. Today when I launched the program it asked if I was a new customer or upgrading. Thinking there had been an update I clicked on updating. Backed up from an existing file and saved again on exit.
Now each time I launch the program I get the same thing happening. I keep being asked if I am new or upgrading and having to back up from an existing file.
Is this due to a corrupt file somewhere and should I reinstall the program or is something else causing this to happen?

Tina86

And if by magic it is now working properly again ! :) So what was that all about???

UKR

Looks like Mr. Murphy came by to lend a hand ...

Can you please provide me with the complete drive letter, path and file name of your Quicken data file,
e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\Quicken\QDATA.QDF
Just trying to make sure there isn't a problem with path or file name length being too long for Quicken to handle.

Chris_QPW

If another program locks your data file to do something like back it up or transfer it to a "cloud account" then Quicken will get an error when trying to open that data file, and as such present you with the new user dialog.

Needless to say once the other program finishes and unlocks the data file, Quicken can open it normally again.

Tina86

Thanks for your input guys. Appreicated. The path is C:\Users\Tina\Documents\Quicken\QDATA-2016-09-02-DESKTOP-J34-new-2021-04-27.
Could well be the fact that we back the files up to cloud. Normally I do this at the end of the day when all the programs are closed. Worked ok yesterday. Today it did it again. Backed up from file and it works ok again.

Greg_the_Geek

I would suggest shortening the Quicken data file name to 8 characters or less. The default name is QDATA.

UKR

Tina86 said:

Thanks for your input guys. Appreicated. The path is C:\Users\Tina\Documents\Quicken\QDATA-2016-09-02-DESKTOP-J34-new-2021-04-27.
Could well be the fact that we back the files up to cloud. Normally I do this at the end of the day when all the programs are closed. Worked ok yesterday. Today it did it again. Backed up from file and it works ok again.

I'd also suggest that you shorten the name to something like QDATA-2021-04-27.
Also do make sure that the file name does NOT contain a trailing blank between file name and file type.
QDATA-2021-04-27.QDF is good, QDATA-2021-04-27_.QDF is not (where the _underscore represents a blank space). Quicken can't find files with a trailing blank in the name.