Is my data file too large? file may be corrupted? (Q Mac)

pamela77

Hi, I am using quicken 6.5.3 on Mac )S 10.15.7 catalina. About 5 days ago quicken started deleting or changing transactions from 2017, 18, 19 and 20 whenever I try to download new transactions. I fixed it manually, but it has repeated the same errors on about 25 transactions each time. I then tried saving a backup of the current fixed version and updating and multiple balances on multiple accounts were WAY off - looked like there were a lot of duplicate transactions. I went back to a backup from jan 27 but when I tried to download on that one it says it can't find a corresponding cloud account. One quicken representative yesterday suggested that my data file is too big and I need to start a new one, yet on reading the forums it suggests that the file can't get too big. I have around 20 accounts and my data goes back to 2003. I like having comparisons. Do I really need to start a new file? If not, then what is my next step?
Thank you SO much, I have been working on this for days.

jacobs

You do NOT need to start a new data file; I wish Support representatives wouldn't tell customers that just to escape whatever problem they might be having. I have a data file from the 1990s with nearly 70,000 transactions.

The problem you're having is because Quicken Cloud keeps overwriting your local data. You need to get the Cloud data wiped out or to stop it from syncing. I don't use Quicken Cloud (because of problems like this!), but I believe this is the approach to try…

First, go the Preferences and turn Sync OFF. (I don't know if this will matter based on what's next, but it can't hurt.) Next, create a temporary new, blank data file by selecting File > New. Make sure Sync is off. In Preferences, go to Connected Services and click the button for See All Cloud Accounts. When the list of Cloud accounts pops up, your current (temporary) file will be the one in bold. You want to delete all the others. This will blow away any cloud data which could be overwriting your local data file when you use it or restore forma backup. The only remaining cloud file should be the one in bold.

You can now switch back to your previous data file by going to File > Open Recent and selecting the second one in the pop-up list. Go to Preferences > Connected Services It will pop up a message that a Cloud file cannot be found. 

Click the button to Set up new cloud account. In Preferences > Mobile, Web & Alerts, make sure Sync is Off. At this point, you should be able to edit the messed up transactions without Quicken Cloud changing them back. Depending which is easier, you can either correct the transactions in your current file or restore again the January 27 backup and move forward from there. you might want o test that things are stable first in the current file by changing a couple of the messed up transactions. Then update all accounts. Quit Quicken and relaunch. Update all accounts again. Once you've verified that Quicken is not altering the transactions, you can clean up the other transaction errors and move forward, or restore the backup file and work from there. 

If you don't use the mobile app or web interface, leave Sync off to avoid future problems. If you do use mobile/web, I'd wait until you get everything corrected, save a backup, and then re-enable Sync. 

pamela77

Thank you Jacob, I am excited to try this. Which file should I use. I have one from yesterday that was balanced and corrected as of yesterday but if there is corruption it would be there. I also have an old back up from 1/21 that was prior to my update to 6.5.3. On reading the forums it appears there are a lot of people recently with similar problems. If I go back to the older file, I will lose a lot of transactions and other work that I did that might be hard to recreate.

jacobs

I would start trying with your recent file which has been corrected. It's not corrupted; there's just a sync problem with Quicken Cloud. Should you have problems with that, you can always go back to the older backup file and work with that. 

pamela77

Well I tried it and I am sorry to say that it did not work. In fact, the new update caused multiple transactions in multiple accounts to be changed. My bank account is off by over $150,000 and many others are way off. I think most of the wrong accounts are related to payments from the bank accounts at schwab. The problem is that now when I try to update anything there are many many more accounts that are wrong. Before I did this there were about 25 transactions that kept changing scattered over the past 3 years. Now there are many many more. I appreciate your idea and I was glad to try it but I don't know what to do next.

jacobs

I'm sorry to hear that deleting your Cloud account did not solve the problem. I unfortunately (fortunately?) do not have any Schwab accounts, so I can't replicate your exact set-up and don't have any further ideas to offer.

pamela77

Thank you for your idea Jacob, anybody else out there have any ideas? Are the Schwab downloads still a problem? Now that I have deleted my cloud accounts, when I try to update I have many many transactions that cover the last 4 years that get changed. It looks like it is mostly about schwab payments from 2 different bank accounts and multiple credit cards and they get changed or altered.