How can I restore from Cloud to Laptop?

cdarling

Lost my laptop HDD, unrecoverable, so lost all data and no backup. How can I "download" what I had previously synched to Cloud? All data is visible on the Android App. Want to get it back on laptop.

Mark1104

cdarling - unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. what is in the cloud is just a subset of the original desktop data file..... you didn't back up you HDD data elsewhere????? unfortunately, you'll have to begin with a new quicken file on your desktop.  

https://www.quicken.com/support/what-quicken-cloud

:"Also, the Quicken Cloud is not a backup; you can't restore Quicken data from the Quicken Cloud, and you can't access the Quicken Cloud from anywhere except the desktop and mobile Quicken products. "

AlexisoftheShire

When you do create a new file it is a really good idea to do backups. Quicken can do automatic backups for you if you don't want to do them manually.

splasher

Make sure that you make those backups on something other than your local harddrive, because if it fails, it takes out your .QDF data file and your backups.

Get a couple of 8 or 16 GB thumbdrives and alternate between them when making backups when they get half full, delete some of the older backups.  The reason for two thumbdrives is that you don't have all your eggs in one basket. 

Things do fail as you have just experienced, be prepared for the worst.

Mark1104

even better - use a cloud service; the thumbdrives is an adequate backup device....until it is YOUR house that floods or burns down.... doesn't matter how many thumbdrives you have....if they are all stored in your home, all your eggs remain in the same basket....

splasher

The big hole in Quicken being able to use the Cloud data used by QMobile/QWeb is that when you start using QMobile/QWeb only a limited amount of data (started out at 1 year and changed to 2 years) history is synced to the Cloud.  If you are a user with more history than that, the "restore" would not get all of your data.  It would also mean that you would have to sync EVERY account in your data file to the Cloud.

For it to work as you suggest, it would only be a useful feature for fairly new users because in my case, I'd be missing over 20 years of historical data.  I wouldn't be very happy if I had expected the Cloud data to completely "restore" my data file.

Backups are the only way to ensure data safety.  I make mine to thumbdrives (1st & 15th of the month), to a local home NAS after any Quicken sessiion that makes a change to the data file and I have my computer's Documents folder (which Quicken data is under) to a Cloud backup service nightly.  Is it overkill, maybe the thumbdrives, but I started doing them first and just never stopped.  Oh, and once a month I make a system image backup to an alternating set of USB harddrives.

Mark1104

cdarling - unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. what is in the cloud is just a subset of the original desktop data file..... you didn't back up you HDD data elsewhere????? unfortunately, you'll have to begin with a new quicken file on your desktop.  

https://www.quicken.com/support/what-quicken-cloud

:"Also, the Quicken Cloud is not a backup; you can't restore Quicken data from the Quicken Cloud, and you can't access the Quicken Cloud from anywhere except the desktop and mobile Quicken products. "

AlexisoftheShire

When you do create a new file it is a really good idea to do backups. Quicken can do automatic backups for you if you don't want to do them manually.

splasher

Make sure that you make those backups on something other than your local harddrive, because if it fails, it takes out your .QDF data file and your backups.

Get a couple of 8 or 16 GB thumbdrives and alternate between them when making backups when they get half full, delete some of the older backups.  The reason for two thumbdrives is that you don't have all your eggs in one basket. 

Things do fail as you have just experienced, be prepared for the worst.

Mark1104

even better - use a cloud service; the thumbdrives is an adequate backup device....until it is YOUR house that floods or burns down.... doesn't matter how many thumbdrives you have....if they are all stored in your home, all your eggs remain in the same basket....

cdarling

Thank you all for your helpful responses. Yes, very foolish, no backup. At the same time, I am disappointed that Quicken, which allows a Cloud service using Android, does not allow one to synchronzse both ways. The Cloud data is obviously "somewhere" in the Cloud kit, so why not allow a 2 way synch? Other offerings have this as standard.

splasher

The big hole in Quicken being able to use the Cloud data used by QMobile/QWeb is that when you start using QMobile/QWeb only a limited amount of data (started out at 1 year and changed to 2 years) history is synced to the Cloud.  If you are a user with more history than that, the "restore" would not get all of your data.  It would also mean that you would have to sync EVERY account in your data file to the Cloud.

For it to work as you suggest, it would only be a useful feature for fairly new users because in my case, I'd be missing over 20 years of historical data.  I wouldn't be very happy if I had expected the Cloud data to completely "restore" my data file.

Backups are the only way to ensure data safety.  I make mine to thumbdrives (1st & 15th of the month), to a local home NAS after any Quicken sessiion that makes a change to the data file and I have my computer's Documents folder (which Quicken data is under) to a Cloud backup service nightly.  Is it overkill, maybe the thumbdrives, but I started doing them first and just never stopped.  Oh, and once a month I make a system image backup to an alternating set of USB harddrives.

Chris_QPW

There is also the fact that Syncing the Quicken Cloud dataset is unreliable, all kinds of problems with it have been reported.  And one of the main "troubleshooting/recovery" methods suggested is resetting the Quicken Cloud dataset from the Quicken Desktop data file.  Which means that even if one was to build up data past the 2-years if they had to do a reset, they would be back to two years again.  Not to mention that not all the data is even stored in the Quicken Cloud dataset, like saved reports.