Maintaining a Clean Data File

InkPen

Should I use Quicken to validate my file and rebuild investing lots annually to maintain data integrity and prevent future issues, even if no data damage is currently suspected?

Quicken Classic Premier

RalphC

I validate on a weekly basis so any corruption is caught quickly and before a large amount of transactions are entered into a corrupt data file necessitating an arduous backup restore and rebuild.

q_lurker

I almost never validate -maybe twice a year if I am seeing something suspicious or that I don’t understand.

In the same context, I make no effort toward mobile connectivity, and have used a limited number of financial institutions (about 5) for downloading activities for the past 2+ decades.

Chris_QPW

I'm in the same camp as @q_lurker. I think I have run Validate and Repair more times just because it comes up in a thread that someone sees something, and I'm curious if I can reproduce it, then actual problems with my own file. Data back to 1996.

If I think back to times, I have noticed problems this is what comes to mind.

I had both an ESPP and EOS account get "wacky" where the shares and such wouldn't record correctly. The biggest problem here was that since these are maintained by "wizards" it is really hard to fix any problems. For both of these I ended up creating new accounts for the transactions going on past that point (left the old accounts for their history).

It seems to me that there was "flakiness" after some of the Intuit yearly updates. I mostly chocked them up to the fact that Intuit force a database update (which prevented backwards compatibility) and as such had to do conversions that weren't always 100% correct. I haven't seen any of that since Quicken Inc took over and stopped doing the yearly database conversions.

Past that I have seen test files been messed up when I tried to play with sync to Mobile/Web.

And my data file, along with many more people's data file, was totally corrupted at one point when using Online Bill Presentment.

So, in short, I believe "corrupted files" have more to do with what functionality you are using than anything else.

I will also say that in my opinion as they have been pushing more and more to the servers, I have noticed that "Restore" has become a dangerous operation instead of the "safeguard". All attempts to "go back in time" especially if you use Restore instead of just a data file from the past, tends to play havoc with any online service including downloading of transactions.

RalphC

I validate on a weekly basis so any corruption is caught quickly and before a large amount of transactions are entered into a corrupt data file necessitating an arduous backup restore and rebuild.

q_lurker

I almost never validate -maybe twice a year if I am seeing something suspicious or that I don’t understand.

In the same context, I make no effort toward mobile connectivity, and have used a limited number of financial institutions (about 5) for downloading activities for the past 2+ decades.

Chris_QPW

I'm in the same camp as @q_lurker. I think I have run Validate and Repair more times just because it comes up in a thread that someone sees something, and I'm curious if I can reproduce it, then actual problems with my own file. Data back to 1996.

If I think back to times, I have noticed problems this is what comes to mind.

I had both an ESPP and EOS account get "wacky" where the shares and such wouldn't record correctly. The biggest problem here was that since these are maintained by "wizards" it is really hard to fix any problems. For both of these I ended up creating new accounts for the transactions going on past that point (left the old accounts for their history).

It seems to me that there was "flakiness" after some of the Intuit yearly updates. I mostly chocked them up to the fact that Intuit force a database update (which prevented backwards compatibility) and as such had to do conversions that weren't always 100% correct. I haven't seen any of that since Quicken Inc took over and stopped doing the yearly database conversions.

Past that I have seen test files been messed up when I tried to play with sync to Mobile/Web.

And my data file, along with many more people's data file, was totally corrupted at one point when using Online Bill Presentment.

So, in short, I believe "corrupted files" have more to do with what functionality you are using than anything else.

I will also say that in my opinion as they have been pushing more and more to the servers, I have noticed that "Restore" has become a dangerous operation instead of the "safeguard". All attempts to "go back in time" especially if you use Restore instead of just a data file from the past, tends to play havoc with any online service including downloading of transactions.