After the last Quicken update, my reconciled balances were all completely off. What now?

Question

Is there a quick way I can delete all previous years from my file?  I am fully reconciled through June of 2021, but the last update seems to have screwed my files.  I cannot even go back to a positive balance and start from there, as all balances back into 2019 are now in the "red".  Is there anything I can do?  Calling a Quicken help agent was no help at all.

Frankx · Answer

Hi @NancyMac,

From what you've told us it is clear that restoring a recent backup - as suggested by @jacobs is the best course of action.  Hopefully it is a recent one.

Frankx

garysmith87 · Answer

The first thing I would check would be if your Starting Balance (the first line in the register) was deleted or changed.  Just add a new Starting Balance transaction dated one day before the earliest entry with a correct starting balance...or if that entry is there, edit the amount to correspond with the correct amount.

Alternatively, find a backup file previous to the latest update and restore that.  If the balances are correct as of that backup date, continue from there.  If not...I would check the starting balance for each account, write them down and use them as a guide for the mucked up file starting balances.

If you use macOS's Time Machine, you can restore your data file from there.  Or if you have Quicken Mac create automatic or manual backups, you can restore from there by going to FILE > Restore from backup.  All your backups will be listed there.

jacobs · Answer

I'd suggest restoring a backup file and moving forward from there. Quicken automatically created a backup before your update, and you may have others available via Quicken backups-upon-quitting, Mac Time Machine, or other computer backups.

It seems unusual that a minor update would have messed up the transactions and balances on all your accounts. So I'd try going back to the backup when things were okay (make a copy of it before proceeding), and try to open it in the current Quicken version 6.3.3. If all's well, you just have to re-do any transactions you've entered since the update; if the same problem occurs, then you know it's something with this version which is affecting your data. f that happens, then post here again and we can talk about what to look for as the source of the problem; it's possible it's something simple.

To answer your original question, no, there is no easy way to delete previous years from your file.