After my third try it looks like I am almost completely out of the woods with the Schwab transition. It looks like everything is working normally, with one small caveat I will mention below.
*The backstory: First failed attempts*
My initial attempt at doing the Schwab connection method switch was last Thursday 11/18, using the instructions here:
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-manually-change-connection-method-charles-schwab-accounts While I didn't have any problem deactivating existing connections or configuring the new connections, the aftermath was a disaster. Dozens or hundreds of transactions that were already in my Schwab account registers and already Reconciled (in the case of my Schwab Bank accounts) had been modified/corrupted, losing payee, category, and memo data, and had their status changed to (c) Cleared. Transactions that were transfers between Schwab accounts seemed to have gotten orphaned/disconnected from the other account involved in the transfer, and account balances were off by thousands in some cases.
I reverted to a good recent backup before the changes. Then the next day 11/19 the old Direct Connect connections stopped working, so it was time to try again. This time I first installed the mondo patch to update to R37.25, then tried again using the same instructions linked above. Also, instead of clicking the Schwab logo in the Add Account popup, I searched for and used the one called "Charles Schwab Bank - Investor C". I only set up / re-linked my Schwab Bank accounts, not the brokerage accounts, hoping that limiting the scope of the changes might have better results. The outcome for my Schwab Bank accounts was exactly the same (exactly as bad) as my first attempt.
I again reverted to the good backup and decided to wait til after the weekend in hopes that something would get updated or straightened out before I try again.
*The successful attempt*
For my third attempt today, here was the process I followed. This was still using the R37.25 I have been running since installing the mondo patch for my second try. Similar to my first attempts but with a couple of important details:
(First note, if any of your Schwab accounts are set to automatically enter transactions, first turn that off! That way the downloaded transactions will stay in your "Downloaded Transactions" area below the register, where you can check and delete them as needed later in the process. I've never used "automatically enter" anyway so this was not an issue for me, but I wanted to mention it in case you need to switch this off first.)
1. Edit --> Preferences --> Mobile & Web --> Sync: OFF
(I had read some posts here on the forum that thought that something with the Cloud Sync might be causing some of the changes/corruption to existing/reconciled transactions. Since I don't even use Quicken Mobile or Web, it was no problem for me to turn this off. If you do use Quicken Mobile or Web, I would try turning it off for this connection method switch, then turning it back on once the dust settles afterward.)
2. Deactivated all Schwab accounts' online access (Tools --> Account List --> Edit --> Online Services tab --> Deactivate)
3. I can't remember, but I may have closed Quicken and re-launched it. Doesn't hurt to, anyway.
4. Tools --> Add Account --> Clicked the Schwab logo on the popup. Went through the whole authentication process with Schwab through the popup browser window. Note: changing the Schwab password near the end of the process is only an optional suggestion; it is not necessary. I did not bother.
5. Once the process returned me "back to Quicken," I linked each of my Schwab accounts I had authorized to my existing Schwab accounts in Quicken. The dialog where you do this is a little wonky/glitchy. For example, I have two IRAs, and I found that after linking the first one (a Roth), the second one (a Traditional) was no longer in the list of available accounts to link my Traditional IRA to. I had to go up and un-link the Roth one, then both IRAs were available to choose from for the Traditional, so I could link the Traditional. Then I was able to go back to the Roth and link it. Also when I linked my Schwab Bank accounts, the little drop-down where it shows the account type appeared to change from "Checking" to "Brokerage". However, if I ignored that and then clicked in the next account's drop-down box where the Add/Link/Ignore options are, then the drop-down for the Schwab Bank account's type would correct itself back to Checking.
6. Once that was done, Quicken downloaded everything for all of those accounts. As before with my first two tries, it downloaded an assortment of transactions (but not all the transactions) for each account going back to about July 2020. However, this time in the process, *it left my existing account registers alone!* This was key to this attempt's success. No lost payees, categories, or memos. All transfer transactions were intact. All (R) Reconciled transactions remained that way; nothing switched to (c) Cleared at all. Account balances remained what they should be.
Now it was a matter of going through all of those downloaded transactions and dealing with them correctly...
7. For Schwab Bank accounts, I accepted transactions that were new (after double-checking them against my transactions in my account online on schwab.com). Everything else was a duplicate of a transaction that was already Reconciled in my bank account registers, even though they showed as "New" in the Downloaded Transactions tab. So I just bulk deleted them all. With bank accounts this is easy - just click the first one in the list under Downloaded Transactions, then scroll down to the bottom of the list, Shift+click the last one, and then delete them all in one fell swoop. Done! *EXCEPT* that I couldn't reconcile automatically, because Quicken shows the "Online Balance" of the bank account to be "0.00". This is the one remaining bug, but it seems like it is one that Quicken/Schwab should be able to iron out easily, and I don't mind living with it in the meantime.
8. For Schwab brokerage accounts, most of the transactions that downloaded were Matches, and showed that was (as "Match") in the Downloaded Transactions tab. I had a few "Near Matches" too. All of the Matches and Near Matches were fine and good. But each account also had a number of "New" transactions that were not actually new. Almost all of these were cases where I already had a sequence in my register consisting of a "Div" followed by a "Buy" the next day or something - basically the two transactions involved in reinvesting dividends. In some of these cases, I had ReinvDiv transactions that had downloaded that corresponded to these, but which Quicken did not recognize as a match and so labeled them "New." So for each brokerage account, I had to scroll through the Downloaded Transactions list and delete all of the "New" transactions one by one (no Shift+click in brokerage accounts like there are for checking - not sure why this would be). This was the most tedious part. Once I had deleted all of the "New" transactions for a brokerage account, then it was a simple matter of hitting "Accept all" to accept all of the Matches and Near Matches with one click. Done!
9. As some kind of collateral damage to the Schwab connection method changeover, after doing all of the above, I had four other NON-SCHWAB brokerage account connections, that have always worked fine, stop working on subsequent One Step Updates, throwing error OL-362-A. At first I thought I had to deactivate and reactivate the connections on each of these, but that turned into a bizarre game of whack-a-mole where only the one I had reset most recently would work. Then I found out that all I needed to do was to close Quicken and then re-launch it. Run a One Step Update again, and like magic, now all of those account were downloading just fine, no errors.
*End result (so far)*
All of my accounts (both Schwab now using EWC+ and all of my other non-Schwab accounts using either DC or EWC) are downloading fine as far as I can tell (I will be checking/updating daily and will come back here to update if it turns out things aren't downloading in days to come). Everything looks shipshape in all of my account registers *EXCEPT*: my Schwab Bank checking account show an "Online Balance" of 0.00, making reconciliation impossible. This is the one wrinkle that I am aware of that still needs to be ironed out.
Posting all of this in hopes that it can be helpful to someone.
