Recovering Quicken data from Quicken.com

Boborino

Our hard drive crashed and turns out Time Machine was not backing up each user (my wife) and her main Quicken file. Quicken was making back-ups but only to the now failed drive (of course).
So we log into Quicken.com and can see all of the data, however.

Is there anyway to get Q4M to sync our data from Quicken.com BACK to the native Mac app?

jacobs

The conventional answer has always been no; Quicken Cloud is not a complete backup of your data, and wasn't designed to function as a starting point for a new Quicken desktop data file.

BUT…

We learned fairly recently that there is an unannounced hidden feature in Quicken Mac which is designed to let you create a new desktop data file from an existing Quicken Cloud account. This option is labeled as "beta", so there's no guarantee it will work exactly as expected. Also, my understanding is that your Quicken Cloud account doesn't contain all your data, especially if it went back many years. But you can give it a try and see what you get.

To do this, launch Quicken and once it opens hold down the Command key while selecting File > New. With the Command key held down, you'll see an additional starting option which is normally hidden: Start from a Quicken Cloud account.

EDITING TO ADD: I tried this option with my test file. Quicken selected the wrong Cloud file (and old one from my test copy of Quicken 2015) and did not offer me a way to search from my various Cloud accounts and select the most current one. 


One question, though: when you say Time Machine wasn't backing up a particular user, are you sure? Time Machine will back up the whole hard drive, including all users on it, unless you have it set to back up only certain folders. So unless you specifically excluded your wife's User folder (or the folder within it that contains her Quicken data file), your Time Machine backup probably does contain the file. 

Boborino

I will try that, thank you.
When I open up the TM volume I see folders for all users but there is a red dash thru the folders of my wife's. I tried searching manually thru each versioned folder.

What happened was my wife apparently had her Quicken file on her Desktop which wasn't being synced with iCloud. When we turned on iCloud sync her Quicken file disappeared. I've looked all over the HD and can't see if it was moved.

The data was for a non-profit group she was doing volunteer work, so it isn't trivial, unfortunately.

jacobs

I believe the red line you're seeing in Time Machine for her User folder is because you are not logged into her user account. You need to be logged in as her, then open Time Machine, and it should show the folders her user account had access to. It should be easy to get to her Desktop folder.

When you turn on iCloud sync, files get moved to iCloud. Have you tried logging onto iCloud via a browser to see if it's there. (Sorry, I don't use iCloud for storage, so I don't know exactly what it would look like.)

Boborino

Yup tried the iCloud browser option.

We reinstalled macOS onto the drive (not from Time Machine) and the only user is her, so you would think she should have access. The Time Machine backup drive was setup when with multiple users and I don't recall excluding anybody. So it is odd that I can't see it.

Boborino

I tried the Start from Beta option and it couldn't find any files.

jacobs

Is it feasible for you to try to reinstall your entire Mac from Time Machine? This would restore all users and file/folder permissions. Of course, there's always the possibility that something will be messed up in the data store in Time Machine and the restore won't work or won't work correctly or fully. But it might be worth a try, if you can afford to wipe a hard drive to try it. If you do, get it set up at night and let it run overnight, as it might take awhile. 

Boborino

Fixed it.....had to move the folder I thought TM was holding the file onto off of the TM volume and onto the desktop then I was able to change permissions on the folder and low and behold....the file.

Thanks Jacobs!

jacobs

Great news that you were able to recover the file!