Custom categories missing from transactions

EdQuig
EdQuig Quicken Mac Subscription Member, Mac Beta Beta

I discovered that several of my manually created categories for transactions are missing, (~620 transactions showing as uncategorized). The categories are also missing when I check the Quicken online/web app.

I checked that they are not marked as "hidden" in the desktop app but they are not in the list of categories at all. Restoring from a backup file in October restored the missing categories but it is odd that they just disappeared with no specific errors or failures in the app. There were had no other issues with my data file that I can see. I suspect that a recent update changed the categories or somehow removed my custom ones.

Is there a known issue that I am missing or by chance a new limit to the number of manually created categories?

Quicken 7.10.1

Mac OS 14.7.1

Comments

  • Quicken Jasmine
    Quicken Jasmine Quicken Mac Subscription Moderator mod

    Hello @EdQuig,

    I believe this issue with your custom categories disappearing from your transactions could have been caused by damage within your file. However, I do have a couple of questions that may help us further determine what occurred.

    Did you notice this issue occurred immediately after updating to 7.10.1? Also, do you keep your Quicken file on a shared drive or synced with a cloud service?

    Please let me know!

    -Quicken Jasmine

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  • EdQuig
    EdQuig Quicken Mac Subscription Member, Mac Beta Beta
    edited December 9

    Hi @Quicken Jasmine

    I noticed this issue was present in backups beginning in November and December and am not sure how that lines up to previous Quicken releases. The backup on October 23, 2024 was the most recent one that still had my custom categories.

    The Quicken file is local to my laptop and the only cloud connections are to the Quicken Online Backup feature.

    Anecdotal: I noticed that the backup file that restored my categories was ~10.6MB and all the ones created after that are 30MB+ if that is helpful. There are no attachments to any account in my Quicken data file before or after that would correlate to a jump in backup size. (I checked each account before and after restoring the backup).

  • Quicken Jasmine
    Quicken Jasmine Quicken Mac Subscription Moderator mod

    Hello @EdQuig,

    By chance, do you password-protect your Quicken file?

    Let me know!

    -Quicken Jasmine

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  • EdQuig
    EdQuig Quicken Mac Subscription Member, Mac Beta Beta

    Hi @Quicken Jasmine

    Yes, my Quicken file is password-protected.

  • jacobs
    jacobs Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    @EdQuig The first thing I suspect when I read a user reporting this problem is Quicken's syncing between your local desktop data file and Quicken's cloud services. Do you use either the mobile app or web interface? And if not, do you have Sync enabled? (That is, in the Settings > Mobile, Web & Alerts screen, is Sync set to On or Off?)

    If Sync is On, and you don't absolutely need the mobile app/web interface, turn Sync to Off. Then go to Settings > Connected Services and click the Reset button for Quicken Cloud. This will assure that your data isn't being synced to Quicken's cloud services.

    I don't think Quicken acknowledges that there are occasional problems with minor data corruption in the syncing process, but there are enough anecdotal reports from users that it seems clear there are occurrences of older data overwriting current data. That's why I never enable Sync, and I think you'll find most longtime Quicken users here do the same. It may work most of the time, but I'm unwilling to risk any loss of or changes to my carefully curated data.

    As for the file size change, don't be alarmed by that. It seems the Quicken Mac development team was trying to isolate a problem a small percentage of users were experiencing which related to encrypting the data file. In one of the recent updates, they apparently disabled the compression setting pin file encryption to see if it resolved the problem. As a result, files which were previously compressed by about 60-65% currently are not. I imagine that once they resolve the problem — which may be a macOS problem rather than a Quicken-specific problem — they'll re-enable the compression for encrypted data files.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • EdQuig
    EdQuig Quicken Mac Subscription Member, Mac Beta Beta

    @jacobs Thanks for the info! If it becomes continuously buggy I'll probably reevaluate Quicken Simplifi or another web-based product to track finances. I regularly use the mobile app and am not always on the same computer so cloud sync & the web app are valuable features (to me).