28-cent Dividend Entry corrupts an entirely different Investment Account

ColdGranite

TL;DR:

A valid 28-cent dividend entry for a Mutual Fund in an investment account, appears to have corrupted ALL of the entries in ANOTHER unrelated investment account. Whereby... in every entry of the second account... the correct original security name has been replaced by the Mutual Fund name.

And the final two entries of the account were replaced by two identical 28-cent dividend entries for the Mutual fund.

I have since rebuilt the file from a 2022 backup, before the corruption, so I post this only for discussion and perhaps someone has an insight as to how such can happen.

THE DETAILS:

Using Quicken Classic Home and Business Canada Version R57.25 (R57.25 is a recent patch to fix the “Check Internet Connection” issue, but my problem existed in the previous version as well.)

I started using Quicken approx 1994 and have used it continuously since.

A week ago, I noticed the following peculiarity:

Consider the following three Quicken “Accounts”:

1. CHEQUING ... (a bank chequing account)

2. MY_PORTFOLIO ... (an investment account with multiple mutual funds, fixed income, ETFs, etc) One of the Mutual Funds in this account we will call MONTHLY_INC.

3. REAL_ESTATE ...(another investment account containing just 1 single real estate stock which we will call MY_ROCKS).

150 shares of MY_ROCKS was purchased in 1977. There were some additional shares over the years. When I started using Quicken in 1994, all transactions were manually entered and tracked in the REAL_ESTATE account in Quicken.

All units were sold in 2005, with a transfer as a deposit of $35,696.20 to CHEQUING, and the REAL_ESTATE account went to zero. It was then placed into the “Separate” category on the home-page list, marked as hidden, and basically forgotten.

The other day, I notice that there is an unexpected balance of approximately $34,000 in the “Separate” category, and it was coming from the REAL_ESTATE account...I have no idea how long it has been there. Since I did not expect anything to be there, I was not looking.

INVESTIGATION:

I happen to have a backup from July, 2022. When I look at it, the REAL_ESTATE account has all entries and a zero balance, just as expected.

However, in my CURRENT file, the REAL_ESTATE account has been corrupted as follows:

--- All of the entries in the REAL_ESTATE account REGISTER now show as purchases of the MONTHLY_INC security, instead of the MY_ROCKS security... the “HOLDINGS” tab still shows it as the MY_ROCKS security, but the register entries in the REAL_ESTATE account all show MONTHLY_INC instead. The prices and share amounts correspond correctly to the original MY_ROCKS purchases. I double-checked, and the MY_ROCKS security still exists in the list of securities and had not been deleted.

--- The two most recent entries in the REAL_ESTATE account ... which were an addition of a small amount of stock in 1980, plus the final sale of all units in 2005 ... have been replaced in the REGISTER by two almost-identical entries dated 2022 and which were simply a 28-cent “Dividend income” , but there is no cash balance showing under “holdings”. More on these two entries below.

In the “Holdings” tab, the dropdown does not show the final two entries... neither the original correct ones, nor the replacement 28-cent ones.

--- Because the final sale has been erased, the REAL_ESTATE account shows a balance of 173 shares remaining. These are apparently still valued at the last know MY_ROCKS price (which would have been at the time of the 2005 sale), and thus the $34,000 balance showing for the REAL_ESTATE account.

--- The very last 28-cent Register entry shows a “Transfer Account”, being the CHEQUING account. When I select “Go to Transfer”, it takes me to the CHEQUING entry for the $35,696.20 deposit, as a result of the sale. Even though, obviously, the amounts no longer match.... and that entry in the REAL_ESTATE account does not now actually SHOW a sale, and still shows the stock remaining in the account.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION of the 28-cent Entries:

The 28-cent entries in the REAL_ESTATE account were dated 2022-08. Investigation of other investment accounts show that this WAS a legitimate entry for the MONTHLY_INC mutual fund, in the MY_PORFOLIO account at that date. The MY_PORFOLIO account had been active before and since, and there is no evidence of any corruption there. How and why the 28-cent entry would overwrite two entries in a totally separate and long-inactive account is the mystery.

When I run File Validation, I get:

“Quicken repaired ACCT_11d90 account. No action required.”

And also:

“Correcting invalid category type for category: ACCT_11d90

Invalid category type corrected”

I don’t know what that means, because I do not have any account named ACCT_11d90.

There are no other apparent errors in the validation.

I have since rebuilt my file from a 2022 backup... which was the most recent that I had with the REAL_ESTATE account still correct.

I post this just for discussion, in case somebody else had similar... or perhaps somebody has an insight how something like that could happen.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @ColdGranite,

The issues you describe are typically caused by issues within the data file itself. Having your Quicken file on a shared drive (where it's possible for more than one person to have the file open at the same time), or synced to a cloud backup service like OneDrive, iCloud, or Dropbox can sometimes cause issues like that. There is also a small chance of errors when the data is converted to a newer version of Quicken. If you convert between Quicken for Mac and Quicken for Windows (or vice versa), there is also a chance of errors when the data is converted. If the program crashes or your computer crashes, that may also potentially cause problems with the file. If you've had to recover the file after it was accidentally deleted or recover it from a damaged hard drive, that could also cause data issues.

I hope this helps!