Restore deleted records?

ahowell

I converted 5 years of PayPal transactions from CVS to qfx, using the money thumb converter. I imported them into quicken mac. I was dissatisfied with the results, so I highlighted the new account it created, went to the Accounts tab, and deleted the account.
When I attempt the re-import the 1000 + transactions, I'm getting an error message stating "Download unavailable" Quicken is unable to update the account because Web Connect support for your financial institution has been either temporarily, or permanently discontinued (CC-885).
I see that there is alternative way to Disconnect Account under Account Settings. But the account is no longer available to disconnect. I tried Reset Connection as well, but no luck.
Is there any way to fake out Quicken Connect, from PayPal, so I can once again import the files?

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @ahowell, 

Thank you for contacting the Quicken Community, I am sorry that you are experiencing this issue. 

I suggest creating a test file and attempting to import the Paypal QFX into there to see if the same error occurs. You can create a test file by going to File>New>Start from Scratch. 

Please let me know how this goes, I look forward to hearing your response. 

jacobs

Since you used a third-party converter to create a QFX file, you'd need to know if it is getting the correct financial institution code for PayPal, or if it used one it knows works which is unrelated to PayPal. Every QFX file has a line with an INTU.BID (Intuit Bank Identifier Number). Quicken validates that the financial institution referenced by the number is a currently-participating institution which allows QFX imports into Quicken (not all do). Some third-party file conversion tools use an INTU.BID number for another bank which the developers of the tool found would work.

The other issue is that every transaction downloaded from a  financial institution in a QFX file is assigned a unique number, the FITID (Financial Institution Transaction ID number). The servers at each financial institution are responsible for generating and storing the unique number assigned to each transaction for an account. But you didn't download a QFX file. I don't know if your trip through CVS format had and maintained the unique FITID numbers or not. The reason this is important is that the database in Quicken stores every FITID number is ever downloads or imports. For each new download/import, it checks to see if the FITID number exists in the database; if it exists in the database, that means it has previously been imported into Quicken, so Quicken discards it as a duplicate. This is how Quicken doesn't create duplicate transactions every time it logs onto a financial institution's server, or every time a QFX file is imported. As a result, if you try to re-import a QFX file after deleting transactions in Quicken, Quicken will believe all the transactions are duplicates and not import them.

It may be that you'll need to try to fake out Quicken by using a different INTU.BID number (Google it) in your QFX file. Since this goes against Quicken policy, I'm not going to go further with this explanation, but hopefully that gives you a path forward. 

ahowell

Jasmine and Jacob, thank you both for your feedback. It appears that Quicken does not allow users to delete imported transactions, then re-import them due to the INTU.BID numbers. I tried what you both suggested. I should have done a test file with only a few transactions, not 1,000. I read some threads that said "after three months" try again to import the transactions. I'm not sure that is an option. I don't understand why Quicken does not allow end users to delete unwanted transactions, and/or why Quicken IT cannot support end users by deleting unwanted imports in the cloud. I pay for this service, but feel like this choice by Quicken to block me from deleting these transactions is rather unfair, since making a mistake should not result end users being stuck with having to enter hundreds of transactions manually. Maybe I don't understand the back end of this software, and maybe it's not possible to do what I think is possible.

jacobs

ahowell said:

Jasmine and Jacob, thank you both for your feedback. It appears that Quicken does not allow users to delete imported transactions, then re-import them due to the INTU.BID numbers.

Correct about not re-importing the same transactions. But it's the FITID numbers on each transaction which prevents duplicates. 

Here's why this exists (and needs to exist). Your financial institution doesn't keep track of what data you've downloaded. (That's why you can, for instance, create a test file and download the same transactions as your main file.) When Quicken connects to the financial institution, Quicken says "give me what you've got for this account" and the financial institution downloads whatever date range (typically 90 days) or transactions they provide. It's up to Quicken to determine which of those downloaded transactions are new and which already exist. Additionally, if you use Quicken Cloud services, that server is also downloading transactions in the background, and when you sync your desktop data file, the Quicken application needs to know which transactions have already been imported and which are new. The FITID numbers are the key to this process. In your Quicken data file, there's a table which contains a list of every FITID number you've ever downloaded; Quicken compares each downloaded transaction to that list; it discards transactions with an existing FITID number in the database and imports transactions with no matching FITID number. If this process weren't there, you'd end up with duplicate transactions every time you downloaded, and the process would be unworkable. 

So now you raise the issue of a user mistake, where downloaded transactions were inadvertently deleted and you want to import them again. The problem is that there's no way for Quicken to know which duplicate transactions you want (the ones you deleted) and which you don't. You might say: well, if I delete a transaction, Quicken should delete that FITID number from its list, so I would be able to re-import it. But that means that every time you deleted a transaction intentionally, the next time you download transactions, it would download again! And there would be no way to get rid of it, because you'd keep deleting it and it would keep coming back.

So that's why you can't re-import/download transactions you've deleted.

I'm not sure about this, but there may be a way around this. Try creating a new Quicken data file, connecting to your bank, and downloading transactions. Go through what downloads/imports and delete the transactions which already exist in your real data file (e.g. just leave the transactions missing from your real data file). Select File > Export > "Quicken Transfer File (QFX)". Now re-open your real data file. Select File > Import > "Quicken Windows File (QDF, QFX)". This should import the transactions into a new account in your data file. Open that account in the left sidebar, do Select All, and drag the highlighted transactions to your real account with the missing transactions. I haven't ever done this, but I believe this process will bring in the transactions. (One of the other Quicken Mac experts might chime in here if I'm wrong, or if there's an easier way to do it.)