Can't delete an entry [Q Mac Placeholder]

Jak29672

I have an entry that keeps showing up as a transaction in an investment account. It is a place holder that shouldn't exist.

The message says "This is a special transaction that will automatically adjust to maintain a share balance of $xxx.xx on yy/yy/yyyy if any transaction is added, deleted or modified."

The entry should not be there. How do I get rid of it?

RickO

Most of the time, you can just delete the placeholder transaction. If that's not working, you probably need to dig into the transactions to figure out why the share balance of the security in question does not match your brokerage's records.

UKR

F.y.i., About Placeholders (Quicken Mac)

FAQ: What Are Placeholder Transactions in Quicken for Mac?

Jak29672

I have tried to do some research. The date of the placeholder is 1/24/2015.

Records for this account in Quicken for MAC begin in 3/12/2018. This may be around the time I concerted from Windows to MAC - just can't remember exact date. Unfortunately online records with investment manager only go back 5 years.

Any other thoughts?

Thank you.

Jak29672

I have searched every account and am unable to find any reference to the mutual fund except for placeholder. Can't even deleted the security because it says it is active somewhere. This must be somehow related to the conversion from Windows to MAC. Happy to create transaction to get rid of it but nothing seems to work. Frustrating to constantly deal with temporarily deleted placeholder to see current accurate balance of account.

RickO

If I understand correctly, the placeholder is for a fund that you do not hold any shares of in the account? And that you have deleted the placeholder transaction and it re-appears each time you download?

The placeholder should/wouldnonly be re-appearing if the brokerage is transmitting information indicating you own shares of this fund. It may be something you need to take up with the brokerage's tech support.

One thing you could do is examine the OFXlog which is a file that records the details of the latest download. You could search that file for the fund name or symbol to see what's being transmitted by the brokerage. The file isn't easy to read, but by searching for the fund, you should be able to suss out what's being transmitted. The file can be found at (username) > Library > Application Support > Quicken > Logs > OFXlog.txt and can be read with any text editor.

There is a nuclear option: delete the account and redownload. Since you will only get at most 90 days of transaction history, there will be a placeholder for every position in the account. If you only need to keep account value current, this might work for you. If you need all the transaction history, then it won't. If you decide to try this, I'd make a copy of your file and try it in the copy, then decide to keep or delete the copy.

Jak29672

Thank you for your suggestions. I did talk to Schwab about the transaction coming from their end. They look at their history and can't find how the entry started.

Found the log file. It seems like thousands of lines of data. Any way to do a key word or number search to narrow down what I am trying to find?

Don't really want to nut the account and loose history. Push comes to shove, I guess I can remove account from auto download and manually enter transactions and price updates.

RickO

Found the log file. It seems like thousands of lines of data. Any way to do a key word or number search to narrow down what I am trying to find?

Open it any text editor and use the editors search function to look for the name or symbol of the security in question. The default macOS TextEdit app should work.