Moving data from my longtime Quicken file to a new one to resolve errors

L Frank

I was unable after years to get my Quicken file to open properly. Quicken Help diagnosed a series of log errors in one institutions' data and they recommended I create a new file. I was reluctant to do this but I am trying.

I have five institutions connected properly and can get 90 days of data but all my Categories, Renaming Rules, Recurring Transactions are lost! And if I bring the data from the financial institutions for the past year I will have lost all the Category assignments I made which are customized to my budget structure, not to the Quicken default categories.

SO, can I import at least 2021 and 2022 from the old Quicken file for each institution's accounts? And is there a file of Categories data I can import into the new file?

[Deleted User]

@L Frank - Why not use a QIF export from your old file and import the information and data?

I would import all-non transactional data first to establish all your accounts, categories, Securities, etc.

Then importing transactions can be tricky depending how many transfers and split transactions you have.  I found that these are the most problematic and may require some cleanup after the transactions are imported.

I would run transactional reports from your old data file for all your account and put them to Excel.  This way you can easily reconcile your accounts in your new data file. 

Even if you just use QIF Export/Import for non-transactional data, I think it would save you a lot of time.

BK

Assuming you can open the old file ...

I second @Damian 's approach to first import non-transactional data, ensuring everything is setup to your liking, and then import transactions.  I have done this twice successfully (10 years of data) where it took about a week the first time.  I highly recommend that you try it on test file to get your steps right and lessons learned: First in a small scale (subset of accounts and transactions) and then everything.  No matter what some cleanup is needed (duplicates etc.) and you need to figure out if it is worth your time.  I used the following two links for reference and read everything.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7450045/i-just-succeeded-in-recreating-my-data-file-using-a-qif-export-import/p1
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7903165/qif-file-export-and-import-question-from-old-to-new-data-file-qwin

[Deleted User]

One other thing to watch out for that I learned the hard way when I recreated my Quicken data files.  If you use the QIF process to create accounts, you need to make sure the account type is correct.  Especially if you have Retirement Accounts.  Since Account Type cannot be changed after you set up the account, you would need to delete those accounts with incorrect Account Types, and reset them up manually.

L Frank

Thanks, BK and Damian. I can open the old file and will try this. But I wonder: why was Help not able to extract, delete, or amend the log errors, do you think and will I be importing those little log errors all over again and accomplish nothing? I dont understand what log errors are, but once he said they had found several I should have asked why they couldn't just delete or correct them?

[Deleted User]

@l frank - don't worry.  When you use QIF to export/import data, you are using text data files only.  These types of files would flush out issues, rather than cause them.  If you use this process to import transactional data, it comes over "as-is" and if there were any that are incomplete, it would be noted in the validate log when you do a validate (as you should after you import transactional data).  The log errors that Quicken support mentioned are usually not fixable per se.  They are usually due to data file corruption, or an interface issue that is not easily fixable.  Most Quicken users are not programmers that understand the code that Quicken is written in.  Therefore, our only option is to use troubleshooting tools given to us to use, such as doing a validate, super validate, or copy data file.  If then a validate or copy data file doesn't fix the issues, then as you are doing, there is no recourse but to create a new data file.