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Portfolio Crashing -- if our file is broken, what are best practices for file and backup management?

bebob

Quicken Premier on Windows 10, version R58.14

In a nutshell: Quicken portfolio is crashing whenever we try updating one of our accounts for a transaction back in 2022. Premier Support says our file is broken and we need to create a copy with only very recent transaction history and manually entered balance adjustments to get all our accounts current/accurate. Is there really no way to repair our file? If we have to work off a new copy of the portfolio, how do we make that copy reflect all of the lot purchase history, so that our cost basis is still correct? If the file is broken, how do we avoid it breaking again (what did we do wrong that we can avoid doing in the future)? What are the best practices for saving backups and sharing a file between 2 or more devices (we have been using "complete backup" and "restore" and overwrite when transporting/sharing our portfolio file)?

The long version: My father has managed our family Quicken portfolio since 2000 with entries in more than 20 accounts at 7 institutions going back to 1975, and I have recently taken over updating the accounts. To share the portfolio between our devices, we save "complete backups" to a flash drive, and then restore and "overwrite" each others' Portoflio.qdf file with the changes from those complete backups. We never work on the file at the same time, and at this point I'm doing most of the work and traveling with the backup to update my father on progress.

Last week we had our first-ever Quicken crash. Whenever we tried to correct/edit or delete and reenter a transaction from April 2022 in one account (the program never crashed working with other accounts), Quicken closed without any error/warning message, and it wouldn't save the changes we attempted to submit (trying different devices, restarting devices, and signing out and back into the Quicken ID did not help). I phoned premier support, shared my screen with the tech, and they attempted to resolve this by using the "validate and repair" function on the File menu. This was unsuccessful, so the tech walked me through creating a copy of the portfolio that began in 2020 (he thought the problem might be the file was too large or contained too much data going too far back, etc.; our portfolio file is currently 79,508kb).

Working from this new copy resolved the crash problem, but I really want to avoid this path because (a) I don't know if I can get all of our accounts current and accurate without their multi-year histories (besides cash and share balances, I don't know if cost basis can be accurate without manually entering multi-lot purchase histories), and (b) I'll have to open up a separate portfolio file whenever I want to check on something pre-2020.

Desperate to avoid losing all of our accounts' history, but risking the continued use of our possibly broken or corrupted file, I discovered that I could successfully enter the transaction in that one problematic account, so long as I dated the transaction today, saved it, then edited the date on that transaction to April 2022. Somehow Quicken does not crash on that transaction as long as I'm editing an already-saved transaction (rather than entering it for April 2022 from scratch).

The Quicken support tech said that our portfolio file is either corrupted or broken. He actually said we should create a new file every 5 years or so (when I asked how to carry over each account's history to the new file, he just asked me to adjust whichever balance was off). I'm very nervous to continue using this file if it could crash again, crash more frequently, or crash and not reopen, but I'm pretty sure we need all of our data together in one big qdf in order to make Quicken useful.

How do I know if my file is broken/corrupted? If it is, is there really no way to get it repaired? Or is there possibly some other reason that I was unable to create/edit transactions in one particular account for a previous year? Should I feel confident continuing to use our original Portfolio file even though I was unable to perform a particular transaction without crashing the program?
I've been saving complete backups to a thumb drive to transport between mine and my father's computers, restoring and overwriting at each device to keep them on the same page. Is it better to instead copy the newest portfolio.qdf (rather than the .qdf-backup file) to the thumb drive, and then copy that to the other device, and open that file (instead of doing any "restore")? Is there a difference between opening the portfolio.qdf file shared via thumb drive and restoring the portfolio.qdf-backup of same?
We have not seen the "datasets exceeded" error message, but could that be an issue here?
Is there a difference between opening the portfolio.qdf file shared via thumb drive and restoring the portfolio.qdf-backup of same?
Could it be beneficial to try an older/previous Quicken version?
If we have to create a copy with only the last few years of history and start from scratch on a new file, how do we bring over the lot/purchase history so that our cost basis stays correct? Are there any shortcuts — is there a "snapshot" we could bring of one portfolio file to a copy? If Quicken encourages us to work from a new copy every 5 years, how do we do that?

If anyone has specific insight into our troubles that will be very helpful, but we could also use general advice on backup and restore/transport practices for our portfolio file. Thank you!

Robert

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Accepted answers

mshiggins

Maybe not so badly corrupted that you need to start with a new file or truncate your existing file. I would enter the transaction using the alternate method you discovered and carry on with your existing file.

If you wanted to be extra cautious, you could use Quicken Copy and copy the entire file including all dates. The Quicken Copy does clean up unused space in the file. The downside is it disconnects all your online connections. You will have to reconnect all online accounts. But combining Quicken Copy with Quicken Validate is a good way to eliminate data issues.

q_lurker

Is there any risk to repeatedly using the "validate and repair" function?

I'll offer that there are mixed opinions on that question. The old time message was only to do the validation 'if needed', if the user was seeing suspicious behavior, or if support services recommended it. That was even more the recommendation if the more extensive super-validate.

Yet some users in more recent years adopted the practice of validating the file weekly or at least regularly and reported no issues. Their desire was to catch the problem before it became evident or suspicious.

My personal bias is that I believe the basic validation process is reliable and unlikely to cumulatively damage your file. But I do NOT validate my files with any regularity. The super-validation process I would only go to if I had a more perplexing issue.

If I recall correctly, the current validation process does create a backup of your file before it does anything to your file thereby reducing risk. The attendant challenge is if the validation did damage your file is some subtle manner, you might not discover that damage for several weeks or be able to associate it to the validation, in which case that backup may not be worth a lot.

All in all, I suggest making backups frequently (I backup almost every time I exit Quicken) and doing the validation as frequently as gives you a peace of mind. If you see clean validation reports, do it less often. If you see it fixing issues, you might do it more frequently, but I would also attempt to identify why those repairs were needed - what action I was taking that created the need for the repair.

All comments

crwalejr

What institution(s) causes the crash of your Quicken portfolio during the update? What is the size of the Quicken data file? Do you attach documents to transactions? Did support run your data file through a validation and repair of your data file (File/Validate and Repair)?

bebob

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20452278#Comment_20452278

The crash is caused by my own manual entry, not by downloading transaction updates. Our data file is 80,000kb. We don't attach documents to portfolio transactions. Support did run my data file through the validation and repair process, but it did not resolve the problem. Thank you.

crwalejr

Take a look at this website. It answers a lot of your questions.

How to Resolve Quicken Data File Corruption Error | by quickproadvisor | Aug, 2024 | Medium

mshiggins

Did you try deleting the problem transaction and recreating the transaction?

bebob

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20452283#Comment_20452283

Yes, multiple times. Thanks.

bebob

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20452282#Comment_20452282

The article you linked to says I should validate my quicken file regularly, but the support technician I spoke with said that performing the validate/repair function multiple times on the same file can cause the file harm. Were they wrong about that? Is there no harm in repeatedly validating/repairing the same file? This article also suggests I create a new portfolio and then import the data from the corrupted file — will that risk spreading the corrupted attributes from that old file to the new one? I will try a new file and importing, just to see if it works better. Thank you.

bebob

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20452286#Comment_20452286

It appears you cannot import a .qdf or .qdf-backup to a new Quicken file. The choices for import are limited to .QFX, QIF, .CSV, .QXF, TurboTax, and Microsoft Money files. Perhaps there's a way to export one of those formats from the original/corrupted file. I'll check. Thanks.

mshiggins

Can you provide more detail on the problem transaction? Is there some way to enter it differently?

bebob

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20452337#Comment_20452337

Yes and yes. The transaction I was unable to submit without crashing was a "cash transferred out of account" (see snip). When I entered the transaction with date 4/5/2022, the program crashed. I later found that I could successfully save this transaction without crashing by instead entering it with today's date, then saving it, then editing and changing the date to 4/5/2022. When I phoned Q support, I hadn't found out I could successfully enter the transaction in this other less obvious way. Does this mean maybe the file is not broken/corrupted?

mshiggins

bebob

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20452370#Comment_20452370

Thank you, @mshiggins. I'll go the extra cautious route and create a copy and reconnect all our accounts for download. Is there any risk to repeatedly using the "validate and repair" function? The tech support I phoned said I shouldn't do it more than once for a single file, but looks like the community doesn't discourage it. Thanks again.

q_lurker

Is there any risk to repeatedly using the "validate and repair" function?

bebob

Thank you for the advice on repeated use of "validate," @q_lurker. "Validate" did not resolve the crash issue in our original file. Per @mshiggins suggestion, I made a Quicken Copy of the file, tried the problematic transaction and it crashed again. But after using "validate" on the Quicken Copy of the file, it no longer crashes. Success after all! By the way, "validate" does create a .qdf copy (within a new VALIDATE folder).

Do any of you have advice for best/safest way to transport a Quicken file between different devices? Should we copy the .qdf to flash drive and open elsewhere, or is it better or worse to restore/overwrite a .qdf-backup from flash drive? Thanks again!

q_lurker

Again, I should probably defer to others more knowledgeable, but … I don't think there is a real problem with the flash drive approach, as long as you are careful about always copying the latest version over the old version. Something still goes on with Quicken phoning home to confirm legitimacy and there is some limited risk of messing that up (as I understand it) if data files get crossed up. My choice (of limited value) would be to NOT use backup/restore for that type of transport. Hope someone else also chimes in.