yesterday the budget categories were removed

skgray23

When I looked at my current and also the past budgets all of my created budget categories were removed. The only categories I see are the catch all groups titled Everything Else. The numbers are there but they are no god without the Category titles.

Quicken Jared

skgray23 said:

When I looked at my current and also the past budgets all of my created budget categories were removed. The only categories I see are the catch all groups titled Everything Else. The numbers are there but they are no god without the Category titles.

Hello @skgray23,   

We are sorry about this problem with disappearing Budget Categories. Thank you for telling us about this here on the Quicken Community.

Have you tried restoring from a recent backup? We recommend saving backups frequently by navigating to File > Copy or Backup File... in the upper menu at the top of the screen. Provided that this has been done often, you should be able to restore from a backup that was saved just prior to when this issue emerged by navigating to File > Restore from backup... in the same menu. I am curious about whether or not this problem continues in the restored file.  

Let us know how this works, if you get the chance.

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

pgavon

I have exact same problem. I went to look at my budget and the categories related to discretionary categories are "blank" in the column. I made sure that the detail was "checked" to show all categories (not just the summary). This problem only shows up when reviewing the budget in the "planning" view - Not on the actual budget to actual variance reports. Attached is a screen shot that shows the problem..

skgray23

Spend 4 hours with Quicken and the end result was to export the data file to a QIF then import and basically rebuild. The categories were found so that was the easy part. The bad news is that all of my scheduled activities list transfers and deposits and bills were lost. Some of the account balances were off but time will fix them. What a hassle and backups way back all had the same issue so something major corrupted the data. not sure where exactly the bug and failure was or is but it is the worst nightmare. Thanks for your input but that just didn't work.

pgavon

@skgray23 - I can't believe what you had to go through to correct this issue. By the way- Did you recently upgrade to the latest Quicken version (Windows based)? My problem started right after my last upgrade which tells me that this is problem was generated by the last software update. I will reach out to Quicken support in the next couple of days, but mark my words - more people are going to experience this problem and it will be as bad or worse than the Schwab Debacle....

skgray23

That is when I noticed the issue. Hope you don’t have the same issue as I noticed that as I kept referring to the corrupted file things continued to change each time I opened the file to get information needed for updating the new data file.
What I can’t understand is why this affected the backups also. Not sure they really back up everything needed during the backup process.

pgavon

@skgray23 - I opened Quicken this morning and some of the lines on the "Planning" view that were "blank" now had weird symbols in them, which indicates to me that the problem is continuing to develop. Now I'm pissed that once again I need to go through stuff like this with Quicken. I'm a 20+ year user and not a day goes by that I question if I picked the right software to manage my personal finances.

skgray23

Not to bash the current developers but I long for the days when the system was stable. Most of all I want the days when a release just works and is not flawed with other issues which were not in the previous release. I am a bigger fan of making changes and corrections but internal testing the system prior to release. I think they bought code which was unfortunately glued together with gum and bailing wire and they want to make a better product so they are making changes to sections then put it back together and put it out for public testing, which is very bad.
I have looked for other solutions recently but hate to create the wheel again with another product. I am also a 20 year user and this is the worst I have seen. However the problem this weekend and for most of the remaining week I will be rebuilding again so maybe it is just time to bite the bullet and switch.

skgray23

@pgavon I was running quicken on a laptop for trips and I did not install the update. The same data file which ended up being trashed is perfect with release R45.21 Build 27.145.21
looking into the recreated file it still is trashed. All of my scheduled transactions are now listed as categories that I can not delete. to use the new program I need to start a new.
I feel a call to Quicken is needed.

Snowman

@skgray23 How often do you validate your file? The backup files can be problematic as you found out. I too found this out 5 years ago when an account in my file became corrupted but I did not find out until 7 months later. At that time I did not validate my file very often. I now do it at least once a week and sometimes more. I run the validation before I do my manual backup to make sure the backup file is good. I have Quicken R47.7 running on Windows 10. I have been a Quicken user for the last 23 years.

pgavon

@Snowman - How do you validate the file? I have never been instructed to do this on a periodic basis.

skgray23

I run the validate once and a while when things seem odd. I get it that things may go wrong which is why the validate sometimes helps. I don't remember the validation process finding out issues, which is even more odd.

Snowman

Click File > Validate and Repair, select the "Validate file" box and click OK. You can also "Super Validate" a file by pressing and holding Ctrl-Shift and then click Validate file.

skgray23

Yes I also have run the super validate and again I didn't find issues. I have a feeling that a corruption was made when I tried to add/update a loan account going from web connect to direct connect. That was the only odd change I made to the file after the update occurred. I was just supplied with a link for previous versions so I will try to get a backup that was prior to the issue. Fortunately I backup all the time just for a case like this.

pgavon

@Snowman @skgray23 - Just got off the phone with Quicken and they told me that changes had been made to the Budget portion of Quicken in the last release. He was very helpful and said he wants to do some research before we try to address this. So I'm in limbo for a bit, but would rather have the solution researched before spending hours on the phone. Fortunately, I have a full backup I made a month ago, so hopefully all I would have to recreate would be January, 2023...

skgray23

I could work from my other computer as that seems to work ok. Spoke to Support this morning and tried to get a previous release. I got the link but I don't believe it will go backwards. Still working the issue.

skgray23

@pgavan @Snowman Ok seeing that my backups worked on my laptop I tried to install the new version again on my desktop. The first install was loaded after I used the control panel to uninstall the program. The install failed. Looking at the remaining files which were not deleted by the control panel I went hunting and deleted all traces of Quicken and rebooted. Once back the install went ok and I opened up a backup by just renaming since it would not open a backup for me from the new install unless I created some of the preferences. I know I need to reconnect to the banks and such to move forward but at least this seems to be a stable data source. My guess now is that the patch to 47.7 was not loaded successfully and things went downhill from there.
Pgavan I would try this a solution to your issue and hopefully it will go well with you also.