Why can't I open a backup file without internet connectivity - running in Airplane mode ?

DavidJ

Hi,

I do year end maintenance every several years and I'm trying to open back up files from years ago to find a specific transaction. I went through this process yesterday and had to log into quicken and provide a password for every file I wanted to open, and wait for a code to be sent so I could open my file.

I'm trying today to reopen these same files, but in Airplane mode, and quicken isn't allowing me to open these files.

Why is this?!

How can I open these files to view transactions without having internet connectivity? Is my own personal data locked?

David

DavidJ

Quicken moderators…

One of your team edited my title several days ago…. How about some help with my questions?

mshiggins

Which version are you running? There have been reports from 50.14 and I think 50.15 that it is requiring logging in with your Quicken ID every time you open Quicken.

Are you able to open your current file without entering your Quicken ID password?

Regarding your personal data on your computer being locked if you're not connected to the internet, I am afraid it is a very real possibility. It is very difficult to run the subscription version without constant internet connectivity. If your data is important to you, I would consider doing reports or QIF exports so you have your data available in a format you can view with a text editor, a PDF reader, or spreadsheet program.

DavidJ

mshiggins...I'm on R50.14, and I am able to open my current file even if the internet / Wi-Fi is disabled.

After working through the process this weekend, I'm finally understanding what's happening and the rest of this post is for anyone who might have a similar problem.

As an FYI... all of my backups are kept in a hierarchical file system by year and month, going back to 2013 (not sure where my older files are...).

What was happening, is that when I opened up a backup file from Dec 2016 (by double clicking in File Explorer) and it launched Quicken and went through the conversion process, I saved that new Qdata file to a unique folder location which is different than where my current / active data file / folder is. This allowed my current file to remain unaffected. But when I opened a second back up file, ie.. Dec 2017, and saved it to that same unique folder, it overwrote whatever data there was that said the 2016 file had been validated. Therefore, when I went back to review the 2016 file, I was prompted again to convert it.

BTW… I decided to keep the original backup file based on the version it was created by, so in order to keep the "validation" of each backup file, I created a sub-folder for each month I wanted to review and when I went through the file conversion process, I saved that new Qdata file to the sub-folder of that month.

Prior to understanding this, after I had converted the 2016 backup and saw that Quicken was trying to connect to the web for backup (which it did on the 1st file conversion and messed up my current account data 😡 ) that's when I began trying to open other data files while I had my Wi-Fi off, and hence, part of the confusion as to what was happening. So now, as long as the backed up Qdata file has been "validated", I am able to open it even if internet connectivity is disabled on my PC.

Also, if the backup file being restored was originally created and associated to a different Quicken ID (ie... email) then the option to sign in with a different ID is available at the bottom of the Sign In screen as the file conversion process is under way.

My assumption is that if I had Quicken 2016 still installed, I would not have had the same issues I had here, but that's just an assumption… and a pretty big one at that.

Hopefully this helps someone other than me...!

David

mshiggins

The extra work involved with searching for transaction data across multiple data files is why most of the super users here keep all of their data in one file. I have all my data going back to 1996 in my file.