How to fix corrupted memorized payee list

Question

I have been using Quicken for Windows (currently R39.23) for about 30 years and every few years archive everything more than 10 years old.  Still my Quicken file has grown to 260 MB.  A few months ago, I started seeing all sorts of duplicates in my Memorized Payee List and deleting entries has stopped working.  There is no warning, but the memorized entries remain after being deleted.

In January I did a Super Validation of the file which fixed the problem, but also unbeknownst to me, corrupted many transfers.  I only discovered the corruption a few days ago while preparing to transfer data from Quicken to TurboTax.  With help from Quicken, I was able to rebuild the data file.  Since that took at least 16 hours, I am reluctant to try any file validation or automated process to remove duplicate memorized payees.  Also, some of my memorized transactions have complicated splits that I worked out years ago to pass the financial data in the most useful way to TurboTax to support multiple Schedule C's and E's.  Therefore, automated nuking of the memorized transactions won't work either, and in any case all three options on Memorized Payee List Management appear disabled.

Any ideas?

Sherlock · Answer

There have been a number of issues associated with cloud accounts.

Note: Even if we have never enabled Sync or selected any accounts to be synchronized with the Quicken Cloud, Quicken will synchronize some of our data to a cloud account associated with the Quicken file.

kingkahn · Answer

Thanks that's helpful; I'll try it over the weekend. Interestingly, after not ignoring it for years, my wife started to need to see financial data.  So I turned on Quicken's cloud account last year and installed the Quicken app on her iPad.  Could that be what corrupted my data file?

Sherlock · Answer

I suggest you rebuild the Memorized Payee List and delete the cloud account.  You may want to review:  https://www.quicken.com/support/error-memorized-transaction-list-full-or-memorized-transactions-stop-working and https://www.quicken.com/support/how-edit-or-delete-your-cloud-datasets-quicken-windows

Note: You need to open another Quicken file to delete the appropriate cloud account.  This other Quicken file needs to have a distinct file identifier so that you may delete the cloud account associated with the original Quicken file.  For example, you may create a new Quicken file (select File > New Quicken File...) without any accounts, enable sync in preferences so you may view and delete the cloud account associated with the original Quicken file.

Before making any significant changes to your Quicken file, always save a backup: press Ctrl + B