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Unable to connect to Wells Fargo

SAdair

I use Quicken Deluxe for Windows (R47.15) which I run in VMWare Fusion on a Mac. For several months now I have been unable to connect via Direct Connect with my primary bank, Wells Fargo. The bank's tech support folks tell me that they have no indications of connection problems with Quicken. I have no problems with VMWare connecting to wi-fi. Quicken connects with my credit card companies without issues. I've changed my password with the bank and in Quicken but still cannot connect. Any advice you can offer will be appreciated. Thanks.

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Boatnmaniac

SAdair said:

Sorry I forgot to mention those details. Until a few months ago I was routinely able to connect with WF via DC. The error message I receive is OL-297-A “Quicken is unable to establish an Internet connection” (my wi-fi I functioning and I have no issues with other Internet connections). I’m using Windows 7, preparing to upgrade to 10. Thanks.

I'm sorry to say that it appears WF made a change in their system a few months back that does not allow for a compatible DC connection by Quicken when running Win 7. There is a very long thread about it that you can read through if you wish: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7922727/anyone-having-problem-connecting-to-wells-fargo/p1.

It is not an issue that Quicken can or will even attempt to fix since Quicken discontinued support for Win 7 in Jan 2020 at the same time that MS discontinued support for Win 7. Here are the minimum requirements that was posted in Quicken.com back in 2020 shortly after support for Win 7 was discontinued:

Throughout this long thread it was repeatedly posted that the failure mode was always the same....OL-297-A. And no one has been able to find a way to eliminate the issue while running Win 7 with DC. It leaves 4 options to be considered:

Upgrade to Win 10 or Win 11. Everyone who did that said they were able to restore their WF DC connection. I have been able to successfully download with my WF checking and credit card accounts with DC while running Win 10 and now for the last couple of months while running Win 11. So, maybe it is a really good time to do that upgrade to Win 10 that you have been planning.
Continue to run Win 7 but deactivate DC for WF and then set up EWC instead (EWC connects to financial institutions differently than DC does). I believe everyone who did this said they were able to restore downloads with WF (but they lost the ability to do DC Bill Pay and account transfers from within Quicken).
Continue to run Win 7 but use the WC process (manually download and install transactions in "Quicken" file format from within the online WF account).
Manually manage the account register.

Let me know if you have any questions.

All comments

Boatnmaniac

Have you ever been able to connect with WF via DC?

When you try connecting, are you getting an error code or message? If so, what is it?

Which version of Windows are you running?

SAdair

Sorry I forgot to mention those details. Until a few months ago I was routinely able to connect with WF via DC. The error message I receive is OL-297-A “Quicken is unable to establish an Internet connection” (my wi-fi I functioning and I have no issues with other Internet connections). I’m using Windows 7, preparing to upgrade to 10. Thanks.

Boatnmaniac

SAdair said:

Sorry I forgot to mention those details. Until a few months ago I was routinely able to connect with WF via DC. The error message I receive is OL-297-A “Quicken is unable to establish an Internet connection” (my wi-fi I functioning and I have no issues with other Internet connections). I’m using Windows 7, preparing to upgrade to 10. Thanks.

Upgrade to Win 10 or Win 11. Everyone who did that said they were able to restore their WF DC connection. I have been able to successfully download with my WF checking and credit card accounts with DC while running Win 10 and now for the last couple of months while running Win 11. So, maybe it is a really good time to do that upgrade to Win 10 that you have been planning.
Continue to run Win 7 but deactivate DC for WF and then set up EWC instead (EWC connects to financial institutions differently than DC does). I believe everyone who did this said they were able to restore downloads with WF (but they lost the ability to do DC Bill Pay and account transfers from within Quicken).
Continue to run Win 7 but use the WC process (manually download and install transactions in "Quicken" file format from within the online WF account).
Manually manage the account register.

Let me know if you have any questions.

SAdair

Thanks for this explanation. I missed the announcements about Win 7 and have procrastinated (until now!) to upgrade. I may be switching to Parallels anyway which would be a good time to move to Win 10 or 11.

dangardner

After investigating for an hour the reason for the One Step Update not connecting with 2 of my accounts, i discovered that Quicken will NOT connect if one uses a password with more than 16 characters. And i had recently changed my passwords to ones with more than 16 characters. I had to change the passwords to be 16 characters or less on my banking sites. Then i went on the account list on Quicken, clicked on "edit", then "reactivate". I was asked to input the new passwords. And it worked.

SAdair

Thanks

AAllennc

I am new to the Community, having been a Quicken user for close to 30 years and never had much problems with the application. I am having what appears to be an increasingly hard time connecting to a variety of accunts and am considering moving to another application or going back to manual reconciliation of accounts due to the amount of time this is now taking. Most recently my WF Accounts are either receiving errors or not connecting. When I deactivate, they don't link to the right accounts, try to create new accounts or connect to a completely different account already established. Most recently my WF Credit Card Account linked to one of my savings accounts. I have deactivated one of them and now manually recocile. I am on supported platforms for Windows and Quicken. Is this a known problem? My passwords for accounts are 15 or more characters, so reading the above could it be due to this? If so, that is of great concern as more complex pass phrases have been highly recommended for years as hackers become more and more sophisticated.