Are you attempting to come at this from the standpoint of modifying a "joint" data file, one that accounted for the wife's TSP, or are you creating this out of whole cloth in a new Quicken file accounting only for your own finances?
If the latter, and if the transfer of the Investment Funds has no effect beyond increasing your assets and Net Worth in this new Quicken file, then it seems that all you need to is the use the "Add" action to register the securities inside your IRA. You could make this a simple or as complicated as you want - one big Add for each security stating only the number of shares received "today" and with no basis recorded on the "simple" end - or a lot-by-lot Add for each security with dates acquired and basis. Every thing else being equal I'd probably opt for "simple" as basis and holding periods don't mean a lot, from an income tax standpoint, inside an IRA.
What happened to that temporary TSP file? Did you create it in Q?
If not, you can record the cash coming into your IRA as coming from the IRA itself by using the IRA name enclosed in square brackets [IRA ACCT NAME].
If you look at the OPENING BALANCE in your bank/credit accts in Q … that's how Q reflects a dollar amount txn without an income category.
You could also create a non-taxable category ("TSP Txfr") and show the money coming from there
Q can't download from TSP because the Trustees of TSP haven't authorized such.
In what other way did Q not recognize the acct? Because my ex-wife had TSP and I had no problem creating it in Q.
" That being said, if I try to add just a Cash Transfer in I get a demand for a Transfer Account which, of course, doesn't exist in my now Single Quicken file, it's coming from an "outside" source."
As you probably understand, an Add of a security is like immaculate conception, it doesn't require any "source" of the security, it "just happens." Using the square brackets around the name of the Account in the Category field for the cash has the exact same effect, you don't need to specify where it came from it just miraculously shows up in your Account.
It's TSP's decision, NOT Q's, to disallow downloads from TSP into Q … which is why Add Account got you nowhere.
For TSP, you need to create an offline investment acct.
BTW, my ex-wife had a TSP acct, which is when I went thru this