Backup Errors

Question

When I try to backup quicken, I get "Unable to open source file."

After I click OK to that message, I get "Quicken cannot open the data file because it is in use by another application, such as cloud storage backup. Please close that application or turn off cloud storage sync and try again."

After I click OK to that message, I get "Unable to re-load current file after copy."  When I click OK, Quicken shows me a basic screen, showing just "File" and "Help" under the "Quicken Deluxe" heading.  When I click file>open Quicken file, the file I just tried to save appears as saved, and I can re-open it.

I am using Version R34.24 and build 27.1.34.24.

I am not using icloud backup, but I am using Dropbox.  The path for saving and opening is C:\Users\***(Me)\Dropbox\*** (Me)\***(My Folder)\ Documents\Quicken\BACKUP.

When I pause Dropbox (as directed), everything seems to work properly.

What happened to my ability to open and save without pausing dropbox?  I started using Quicken in 2003, and have never had to pause Dropbox to use it.  This is a new hassle for me.

Thanks for listening.

Sherlock · Accepted Answer

When we manually backup a Quicken file in Quicken, Quicken will close and reopen the Quicken file.  If another program happens to have the Quicken file open when Quicken attempts to reopen the Quicken file, Quicken will fail to open the Quicken file and will report the error.  The reason you may see the error more frequently is there may have been a change in the amount of time between the close and reopen.

Note: It has never been safe to open the Quicken file in a folder actively maintained by Dropbox as there are a variety of Quicken operations that may open and close the Quicken file and non-repairable Quicken file corruptions have been reported.

splasher · Accepted Answer

Nothing new in how Quicken is working.  Something on your computer is causing Dropbox to react quicker to Quicken closing the file and it is getting in the way.Disabling Dropbox when you run Quicken is the only safe way to continue to have your data file in the Dropbox monitored folder.

Chris_QPW · Accepted Answer

There has always been a race condition with this kind of setup, that is why Quicken Inc's policy is to warn people not to do this.  The thing that keeps Dropbox from syncing your data file is it is locked when it is open.  When Quicken closes the data file to start the backup the lock is released and then the backup opens/locks it.  And the reverse happens after the backup.  There are other times where this happens too, like when archiving investment transactions to a different account, and changing from normal fonts to large fonts.

Whether Dropbox it going to get in there depends on just how long the data file isn't locked (which might vary a bit for different releases of Quicken) and how fast Dropbox is detects that the lock has been removed.  In theory Quicken could maintain that lock during all these operations, but it would certainly be "more than the default" that normal Windows operations do.

Note that when Dropbox jumps in it also locks that data file while it is syncing it.  That means it has just blocked Quicken from doing the backup or reading in again after the backup.  And depending on how fast your Internet is and how big the file is, that can take quite a while.

So you have been "lucky" up to now.

What you should do is put your data file in a folder like: C:\Quicken and then turn on the automatic backup (or use the manual backup) to your Dropbox folder.