HELP! My Quicken has arbitrarily changed countless category entries to "uncategorized"! (Q Mac)

mTNLady*78

mTNLady*78

As far as I know, I've never enabled "Sync" in my Quicken on the Mac. As you know, Quicken automatically creates a data backup on my Mac every time I close the program. In addition, I often created an additional backup during lengthy sessions. I've already tried reverting to an earlier backup, but the countless erroneously "uncategorized" entries re-appeared - even in "uncategorized' entries that I had already corrected! I'm very concerned there's an inherent error in my copy of the program. I was hoping that a program error had been discovered & a fix available.

E K E

I think that syncing to the cloud has changed many of my categories. I use Quicken to track transfers between savings and investment accounts. Up until last week, designating transfers between each account worked well but now I have noticed that updating through sync over-writes memos and categories.
(1) For instance, I adjust the category from the standard "Transfer" to "Transfer:[X account]". Starting last week, when I have a new transfer for "Transfer:[Y account]", even historical X account transfers have been overwritten to the Y account.
(2) I have used memos to track certain activities including payments and related transfers. In the past, sync did not modify memos on historical transfers. Last week, I noticed that sync erased memos I inserted into transfers between accounts!
These issues distort my reporting!! Is this a bug or did I mess something up?

jacobs

@E K E After you made the edits for the transfers and memos oil your desktop data file, but you do a Sync (e.g. Accounts > Sync to Mobile)? 

If you made edits but did not sync to Quicken Cloud and just quit Quicken, here's what I think can happen: Quicken Cloud downloaded information from one of your financial institutions, and then when you re-launched Quicken desktop, the Cloud file had some newer data; when it downloaded to your desktop data, it also overwrote the edits you had previously made with its older version of those transactions. It should be smarter than that, but I'm not sure it is.

Try this: make one or two of your edits again in the desktop application, and do Accounts > Sync to Mobile. Assuming that didn't make anything change, quit Quicken and come back the next day to v edify that nothing changed. If this works okay, you can re-make any other edits and you should be okay moving forward.

torin1

I am having the same issue on my desktop application. When I update my online accounts (or sync to mobile), Quicken overwrites the category and the payee/title of the transaction. Even if I then edit the transaction--in this most recent case, a transfer between two of my accounts at one online institution--to be correct and reflecting the transfer and the correct payee, the online syncing just overwrites repeatedly as soon as another sync occurs. How do I prevent Quicken from overwriting the changes that I've made to correct the incorrect categorization/etc.?

Quicken Jared

torin1 said:

I am having the same issue on my desktop application. When I update my online accounts (or sync to mobile), Quicken overwrites the category and the payee/title of the transaction. Even if I then edit the transaction--in this most recent case, a transfer between two of my accounts at one online institution--to be correct and reflecting the transfer and the correct payee, the online syncing just overwrites repeatedly as soon as another sync occurs. How do I prevent Quicken from overwriting the changes that I've made to correct the incorrect categorization/etc.?

Hello @torin1,

I am sorry to hear about this issue you are experiencing with transaction information being overwritten. Thank you for reaching out to us about this on the Quicken Community.

Have you tried turning off the sync function, as detailed in the instructions provided by @RickO earlier in the thread? Let us know the results of doing so, in the event that this has not already been attempted.

I look forward to any update you may be able to provide regarding the situation.

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

E K E

> @jacobs said:
> @E K E After you made the edits for the transfers and memos oil your desktop data file, but you do a Sync (e.g. Accounts > Sync to Mobile)? 
>
> If you made edits but did not sync to Quicken Cloud and just quit Quicken, here's what I think can happen: Quicken Cloud downloaded information from one of your financial institutions, and then when you re-launched Quicken desktop, the Cloud file had some newer data; when it downloaded to your desktop data, it also overwrote the edits you had previously made with its older version of those transactions. It should be smarter than that, but I'm not sure it is.
>
> Try this: make one or two of your edits again in the desktop application, and do Accounts > Sync to Mobile. Assuming that didn't make anything change, quit Quicken and come back the next day to v edify that nothing changed. If this works okay, you can re-make any other edits and you should be okay moving forward.

@jacobs Thanks for the advice. How does UPDATE ONLINE ACCOUNTS differ from sync to mobile? As it turns out, while I did not turn on sync'ing, it might been triggered automatically at some point. I believe the changing of my Category and Memo fields happens because of sync'ing. By turning off the sync'ing, my problem has been solved. But that begs the question of why bother using mobile sync'ing if the actions causes more than just updating of the mobile cloud accounts. It took several hours of trial and error for the tests you suggested before I managed to find the right combination of tests and validations.