Account lost, renamed to Banking

timwrodgers

After the most recent upgrade to Quicken 6.5.0 my primary checking account was deleted. All the transactions are there, but I can't access the Reconcile Account feature. The account does not show up under Banking, but all the transactions are visible under Banking. I didn't delete the account. This happened during the upgrade. Quicken's only solution is for me to restore from a backup file from three months ago and recreate three month's worth of transactions. That's really unacceptable.

The transactions are all there. Is there some way I can recreate the Current Checking account without manually entering three months of transactions?

jacobs

@timwrodgers I'm glad you got  it fixed. I wanted to take another minute to note that what I consider poor interface design in the collapsable account groups frequently trips people up, and I believe explains what you were seeing before. You shared this screen shot of your sidebar as proof that the checking account was missing:



But it's still possible for the checking account to be hidden in the sidebar in this screen shot. Your checking account falls under the Cash sub-heading. Unfortunately, the interface does not show the little ">" or "v" arrow to the left of sub-group names, like Cash, so you don't know what is hidden in that sub-group. But here's how we can be sure the account is actually there and hidden in the sidebar: the clue is that Banking has a $7,734 balance, and the other thing under Banking is Cash. If there were no Cash accounts, Cash would not appear in the sidebar, just as we don't see the Savings sub-heading here because there are no savings accounts. So if there's a balance for Banking, and Checking is the only sub-group, it's telling us there are one or more accounts under Cash and Cash is collapsed. Let me show you in a test account I created…

Here's the sidebar, looking similar to the one you showed:



Nothing is showing under Cash. But Banking shows a balance of $1,235, and the only sub-heading under Banking is Cash — so there must be one or more accounts in Cash which are not showing here. And indeed, if I hover my mouse over Cash, it shows that Cash has a balance of $1,235 and reveals the ">" icon on the left:



And then clicking that ">" icon turns it into a "v" icon and reveals the account or accounts contained within Cash:



So from what you posted, I believe your account was always there, but was hidden in the collapsed Cash sub-group. Hopefully this will help you if your accounts are ever partially collapsed again. (Also, as John noted above in this thread, rather than poking at each individual group and subgroup, you can always click the ••• icon and select the last option on the menu, Expand All Sidebar Groups.)

garysmith87

Quicken Jared said:

timwrodgers said:

OK folks, I solved it in an unexpected way.

I went to Hide and Show Accounts, and just for fun I selected Keep Separate under the Account Name "Current Checking," then de-selected Keep Separate.

Now Current Checking shows up under Cash, as John previously explained, and now Reconcile Account isn't greyed out.

Thanks everyone.

Tim

Hello Tim,

I am so glad that the issue was resolved, although I would have hoped that the solution would be a little more straightforward and intuitive. So, it sounds like the account was not appearing, even when you clicked on the 'Cash' subcategory?

Thanks,

Quicken Jared 

NO...what he was saying is that somehow in the latest update his account was turned into a "Separate" account and that it didn't have a check mark next to it designating it as "Separate" in the Hidden Accounts area.

Which to me would be a major issue...and one that most users would not investigate in that area.  Nor would they know how to remedy the problem.  

jacobs

@timwrodgers  Glad it's resolved for you now, and you'll know what to look for if an account seems to disappear again. 

@garysmith87  You're still looking for a bug smoking gun, but there was a simple explanation: the Cash sub-category was collapsed, hiding the account from view in the sidebar. We can move on now.

John_in_NC

You likely haven't lost anything. You probably accidently collapsed the "Banking" sidebar so you don't see the checking account below it. (And this would explain why you see transactions, but can't reconcile.)

Hover over the "Banking" in the sidebar, you will see how to expand/collapse the sidebar listings;. Alternatively, you could go up to the Sidebar options (the ... at top) and choose to expand all sidebar groupings.

timwrodgers

John, thanks for the quick reply, however that's not the problem. Expanding "Banking" does not reveal the Current Checking account.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened. All the transactions are visible under the header Banking. In November they were visible under the header Current Checking. Now Current Checking is gone (not visible), but the transactions are still there. I was never linked electronically to my checking account. I was only using Quicken to categorize my expenses, so the reconcile function isn't really all that important. I'm just aggravated with Quicken for causing this problem with the most recent upgrade.

Thanks again, and please let me know if you have any other suggestions.

John_in_NC

It's there-there are various subgroups under Banking as well and you likely haven't expanded everything.

 I would use the option at the top as I noted to Expand all sidebar groups. This will expand everything (all groupings) at once. 

garysmith87

Two other things to check:

1 Accounts > Hide and Show Accounts.  See if your account is in that list and somehow is checked to Hide in Lists, Keep Separate or even Closed (Reopen is showing).  If there are check marks in the first two, uncheck them and see if your account re-appears in the Account Sidebar.

2 Restore a previous backup.  Doing so should get you back to where you were prior to the last Quicken Mac update. 

Quicken September

Hi, @timwrodgers!

Thank you for taking the time to reach out to the Community to report your error, though I am sorry that you are experiencing this in the first place. I agree with @John_in_NC - it sounds like your accounts are collapsed into their broader, umbrella categories. There weren't any changes in our recent update that should cause your accounts to disappear, particularly since your transactions are still available.

When you expand Banking, what do you see? Are there any other subcategories like Cash? If so, you may need to expand these other subcategories as well in order to be able to view your individual accounts. You will likely need to navigate your mouse onto the subcategory itself for the expand arrow to appear. If possible, could you please provide a screenshot of your sidebar containing your accounts/Banking header so that we may get a clearer picture of what is going on? 

If needed, please refer to this Community FAQ for instructions on how to attach a screenshot. Alternatively, you can also drag and drop screenshots to your response if you are not given the option to add attachments.

Once you have this additional information, please reach back out so that we may continue diagnosing and troubleshooting this issue for you. Thank you!

-Quicken September

timwrodgers

Hello Quicken September: thanks for the reply. There's nothing else to expand in the left margin of All Transactions.

Here's a screen shot of the sidebar (attached).

Here's also a screen shot of the pop-up under Hide and Show Accounts ...

I appreciate your help.

Tim

timwrodgers

Hello Gary: Thanks for the reply. See the second Screen Shot above for the view of Hide and Show Accounts.

Re: reverting to a saved backup, I can certainly do that, but it means re-creating almost 3 months of transactions, something I'd obviously like to avoid doing.

Tim

timwrodgers

OK folks, I solved it in an unexpected way.

I went to Hide and Show Accounts, and just for fun I selected Keep Separate under the Account Name "Current Checking," then de-selected Keep Separate.

Now Current Checking shows up under Cash, as John previously explained, and now Reconcile Account isn't greyed out.

Thanks everyone.

Tim

garysmith87

Glad you were able to cobble together the solution for your issue.  How your account got internally changed to Separate, but didn't have a check mark...wow...that seems like a major fail on Quicken's part.

One thing we should all agree on, however...you should be creating a backup of your Quicken Mac data every single day you use it.  That way, should you have to restore to an earlier data point, you won't need to create three months of transactions.

And BTW, if you go to FILE > RESTORE, Quicken will list all the valid backups available.  Quicken Mac DOES create an automatic backup PRIOR to downloading and installing a brand new update.  Those backups are listed as BACKUP (Pre-Update) with the appropriate date.  You may not have needed to go back to your own last good manual backup from three months ago.

Anyways...the backup strategy of backing up your Quicken data file each and every day you use it still stands.

jacobs

@timwrodgers I'm glad you got  it fixed. I wanted to take another minute to note that what I consider poor interface design in the collapsable account groups frequently trips people up, and I believe explains what you were seeing before. You shared this screen shot of your sidebar as proof that the checking account was missing:



But it's still possible for the checking account to be hidden in the sidebar in this screen shot. Your checking account falls under the Cash sub-heading. Unfortunately, the interface does not show the little ">" or "v" arrow to the left of sub-group names, like Cash, so you don't know what is hidden in that sub-group. But here's how we can be sure the account is actually there and hidden in the sidebar: the clue is that Banking has a $7,734 balance, and the other thing under Banking is Cash. If there were no Cash accounts, Cash would not appear in the sidebar, just as we don't see the Savings sub-heading here because there are no savings accounts. So if there's a balance for Banking, and Checking is the only sub-group, it's telling us there are one or more accounts under Cash and Cash is collapsed. Let me show you in a test account I created…

Here's the sidebar, looking similar to the one you showed:



Nothing is showing under Cash. But Banking shows a balance of $1,235, and the only sub-heading under Banking is Cash — so there must be one or more accounts in Cash which are not showing here. And indeed, if I hover my mouse over Cash, it shows that Cash has a balance of $1,235 and reveals the ">" icon on the left:



And then clicking that ">" icon turns it into a "v" icon and reveals the account or accounts contained within Cash:



So from what you posted, I believe your account was always there, but was hidden in the collapsed Cash sub-group. Hopefully this will help you if your accounts are ever partially collapsed again. (Also, as John noted above in this thread, rather than poking at each individual group and subgroup, you can always click the ••• icon and select the last option on the menu, Expand All Sidebar Groups.)

Quicken Jared

timwrodgers said:

OK folks, I solved it in an unexpected way.

I went to Hide and Show Accounts, and just for fun I selected Keep Separate under the Account Name "Current Checking," then de-selected Keep Separate.

Now Current Checking shows up under Cash, as John previously explained, and now Reconcile Account isn't greyed out.

Thanks everyone.

Tim

Hello Tim,

I am so glad that the issue was resolved, although I would have hoped that the solution would be a little more straightforward and intuitive. So, it sounds like the account was not appearing, even when you clicked on the 'Cash' subcategory?

Thanks,

Quicken Jared 

garysmith87

Quicken Jared said:

timwrodgers said:

OK folks, I solved it in an unexpected way.

I went to Hide and Show Accounts, and just for fun I selected Keep Separate under the Account Name "Current Checking," then de-selected Keep Separate.

Now Current Checking shows up under Cash, as John previously explained, and now Reconcile Account isn't greyed out.

Thanks everyone.

Tim

Hello Tim,

I am so glad that the issue was resolved, although I would have hoped that the solution would be a little more straightforward and intuitive. So, it sounds like the account was not appearing, even when you clicked on the 'Cash' subcategory?

Thanks,

Quicken Jared 

NO...what he was saying is that somehow in the latest update his account was turned into a "Separate" account and that it didn't have a check mark next to it designating it as "Separate" in the Hidden Accounts area.

Which to me would be a major issue...and one that most users would not investigate in that area.  Nor would they know how to remedy the problem.  

jacobs

@garysmith87 No, I think you mis-read his post. He did NOT say the account was turned into a "Separate" account, and the screen shots show that wasn't the case. He wrote: "I went to Hide and Show Accounts, and just for fun I selected Keep Separate under the Account Name "Current Checking," then de-selected Keep Separate." So he made the account separate, and then un-did making it separate.

I think the explanation for what he was seeing is what wrote 3 posts above; simple user error due to some not-good interface design.

timwrodgers

Jacobs has it right bovedilla. As much as I hate to admit “user error,” I’ll accept “bad UI design” as my excuse. ;)

Tim

timwrodgers

Sorry, that should be “above”

garysmith87

My interpretation is that the account was missing from the Sidebar.

He then toggled on "Keep Separate" and toggled off "Keep Separate"...which then revealed the missing account.  Which bodes...where did the account go prior to that "toggle"?  The screenshot he posted clearly shows that Keep Separate is unchecked for that account...yet the account didn't appear in the sidebar.  

Until the OP responds with what he actually did...we'll never know what really happened.  

timwrodgers

Thanks everyone for your help. Let me know if I can provide any additional information.

Tim

jacobs

@timwrodgers  Glad it's resolved for you now, and you'll know what to look for if an account seems to disappear again. 

@garysmith87  You're still looking for a bug smoking gun, but there was a simple explanation: the Cash sub-category was collapsed, hiding the account from view in the sidebar. We can move on now.