Quicken appears to open QDF data file from local /OneDrive/ folder (edit)

David Christopher

Background:

i bought a new Laptop (Microsoft Surface Go 2)

I installed Quicken and it was working until this morning. All i got was a white screen with File and Help at top Left which never enabled. I had to use Task Manager to close it down. I tried several more times after resetting my modem and shutting the laptop down. Finally, I copied my data file to a stick, downloaded a new Quicken install file, uninstalled Q, Deleted Q folder from Documents, Deleted the Q folder from x86 and reinstalled, copied my data file back into Q folder in Documents. Then started Q, signed in, chose my file and now it is working.

i hit File on Menu on to see what file loaded. (physicality, I opened "Documents > Filename. Here is a Screenshot of what Q thinks it opened, OnedDrive ??? i uninstalled OneDrive from the Laptop a few weeks ago, So there is OneDrive folder on Computer. I opened Onedrive on Web and it is empty,

is this what causes Q not to load every so often? How do I fix it?

Thanks

Quicken Kristina

Hello @David Christopher,

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. It is possible that if Quicken is trying to open a file that is bad, is being accessed by another program, or has been moved that it could cause issues with opening the program. A lot of newer computers using the Windows OS have the Documents folder synced to OneDrive by default, which would result in the default Quicken file being synced to OneDrive. Have you moved your Quicken file(s) to the version of your Documents folder that is not (and has never been) synced to OneDrive, then open the file(s) from there? You would generally find that folder by opening your File Explorer, selecting Local Disk (C:)>Users>Your User Profile>Documents. Doing that can help narrow down if the file location is causing the issue.

Thank you.

David Christopher

Kristina, thank you for the reply. what i did after much 'no good advice from Google/Microsoft' is I found a Onedrive folder in my chrst user folder. I copied the quicken folder in that folder and pasted it into a new Documents folder in chrst. Then I deleted the Cloud folder, put a new shortcut onto desktop and ran the program. here is the result.

The paths to the OneDrive folder were still there, but could not be found when I clicked them and they are now gone.

Unless the Cloud folder was trying to sync, i do not see why the file would not load … but I will see if this is a permanent fix.

Boatnmaniac

@David Christopher - Quicken is a computer-based platform and is designed to be run from a local hard drive. It is OK to save backup files on a Cloud storage site but the main data files should never be saved and run from there. Doing so, as you have observed, will produce some undesired and unpredictable results, including sometimes not being able to open the file in Quicken. And the risk is pretty high that at some point in time the data file will become corrupted, perhaps so badly that it is not repairable/recoverable.

Moving the main data file to your hard drive was absolutely the right thing to do. Hopefully this resolves the issue for you.

(BTW, I, too, have been unpleasantly surprised by MS automatically setting up One Drive as my default Documents folder without prompting me to agree to it. Very dirty and underhanded IMHO. It took me a while to figure it out and to get the default changed, remove all my data that had been saved on One Drive and then disconnecting from One Drive. Don't get me wrong. I am not against using a Cloud storage service for storing data for whatever reason but I want to be the person deciding when and which Cloud service I will use. MS has a very long history of forcing people into defaults without informing them or giving them the option to decline. One Drive is just another example of that. If there were another OS option available with all of the different apps support and capabilities I would drop them like a hot potato.)

David Christopher

Boatnmaniac, I too would drop Windows were it not for Quicken. I have never liked Q for Mac and refuse to give up my QW for that. Only reason I have this Win laptop is to run Q. It is the only “program” I have installed on it. I spend the rest of my online time on my IPhone/IPad.
They are tricky for sure using a cloud icon for the Folder icon. Took me a while to see it was a folder. Once I saw that, I knew what to do.