Importing data from my account

nhmartens

I download data from various accounts into my Quicken database. I've been doing this for years. But this month I ran into a problem with one of my accounts, one that I have successfully imported many times before. The attached PDF file contains all of the backup data. It contains a snapshot of the last few lines of my Quicken data base. It contains a snapshot of the section of the window that shows what transactions are about to be imported. Then, it has the contents of the actual QFX file I imported.

Here's my comments and questions.

Notice, the QFX file has 2 transactions dated 20230325 and 20230212.

Neither of these transactions show up in the list of transactions to be imported. Yet, a completely different transaction shows up in that window with a date 3/25/3023. This transaction does not even appear in the QFX file.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @nhmartens,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about this issue.  I'm sorry to hear you're running into this problem. Is the transaction awaiting review one that belongs in a different account? Are the transactions from the .QFX file importing into any other account?

Thank you.

nhmartens

Quicken doesn't show me the list of accepted transactions except for the account I'm looking at. The attached screenshots are from the same window so they're in the same account.

Thank you.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

If you have automatic entry turned off for all your accounts, then any accounts that have new transactions to review would have a red flag next to them. If you have automatic entry turned on, then accounts with new transactions to review would have a blue dot next to them.

Also, if the transactions have already been imported once, but were deleted or moved after being imported, that could prevent Quicken from importing them again because it thinks the transactions are already there.

Thank you.

nhmartens

The account has a red flag. But you bring up an interesting point. If I delete a transaction, why in the world wouldn't Quicken forget about it? Or at least inform me on the 'accept transaction' window that this is a duplicated entry. And I can't SEE it in my Quicken database so how do I get the transaction to show up? Is there an 'undo' function? Or some way to retrieve deleted transactions? It seems like Quicken has placed me in some sort of twilight zone.

Thank you.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

The reason Quicken doesn't completely forget a transaction you have deleted is because the program assumes you do not want that transaction in that account. If it completely forgot about it, then every time you imported or downloaded transactions, that unwanted transaction would keep coming back, forcing you to delete it over and over. Quicken doesn't have an undo button for undoing an accidental deletion. There are a few different things you can try. First, you would want to backup your file.

Then you would want to import that file, but having it add as a new account rather than download into the existing. To do that, you would need to deactivate the account you usually download into. Then import the file and it should give you a prompt asking if you want to add as a new account or link to an existing. Choose to add as new. That will usually get it to pull in everything from the file, even things it thought it had already pulled in. If that does prompt it to import correctly, you can copy/paste those transactions into the correct account and delete the newly added account. Note: if you forget to delete or deactivate that new account, Quicken will keep importing into that account instead of the one you want it to import into.

If that does not work, you would want to refresh your Quicken just in case there's anything outdated or incorrect being stored in the memory. To do that, go to Edit>Prefereces>QuickenID & Cloud Accounts. There will be a blue link that says "Sign in as a different user". Click that link.

That will bring up a confirmation window. Type "yes" and click the Sign Out button. Quicken will log you out and take you back to the login screen. Before logging in, close out of Quicken and leave the program closed for a few seconds. Then, re-open Quicken. When it finishes loading, you'll be back at the login screen. Login to Quicken and try importing your file again.

If its still not able to import those transactions, the next step would be restoring a backup from before the issue started.

Thank you.

nhmartens

You might be on to something. I tried an experiment. I used the same QFX file shown in my original post. It uploaded only one transaction although you can see the file has two. I did not accept the transaction. Instead, I deleted it. Then I imported the same QFX file. This time, NO TRANSACTIONS WERE IMPORTED. This supports your statement.

This is lousy design. And I should know. I've designed and coded entire systems (financial and others) for over 45 years. From PCs to mainframes. Quicken should allow a way to import a file and 'replace' (with verification) what it thinks are duplicate entries. It should 'show' me deleted entries and allow me to 'permanently' delete them, like they never existed. It's not nice to put me in the twilight zone without a way out.

I disagree with its 'assumption' that if I tried to reimport the same transaction it should not accept it. It should, at least, display a message asking me if this is a duplicate transaction. Let ME decide and show me the reason Quicken is confused.

I also seem to recall (but I wasn't paying close attention at the time) that I imported a file (I think to another account) and that window had something else on the entry. I think it said 'matched'? Not sure. I'll pay more attention in the future. You get so used to the way things work that you sometimes don't notice the little things.

I'm not going to go through the steps above now that I know the reason. Since this account doesn't have very many transactions I'm just going to manually enter them.

Thanks.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the update,

I'm glad I was able to help you figure out why it wasn't importing all your transactions. We do have a product improvement section of the Community where you can submit ideas to improve Quicken in the future. You can use this link to get to that section if you'd like to put in a suggestion to change the way Quicken handles importing duplicate transactions.

Thank you.