After updating the program, sometimes memorized transactions & categorized splits vanish [Edited]

Marilyn D

I have been a loyal Quicken customer for 20 years. Back in the day, I updated Q every other year which worked well and fit into our budget without bank connections or more sophisticated options.

When Q went to an annual subscription, more hoots and whistles were added, connecting to banks, etc. So now I am paying twice as much as I did years ago annually and losing the simple parts of Q which is all I need. I understand that folks want access to their banks and that is fine. But occasionally, a new Q version loses SOME of my memorized transactions and deletes all categorized splits in others.

When I want to backup my file, I cannot remove old options from the panel of choices where to backup. I eventually split my file because I thought being too big might be the issue (although it shouldn't).

Now today, I categorized a credit card statement, not downloaded from the bank, backed up the file immediately, synced with the Cloud, and when I needed to make one small change in the credit card transaction and entered it, the splits were suddenly changed - no longer in alphabetical order, some transactions were duplicated and $121 and change had disappeared from the total. How can this happen? And how do I trust that the numbers I need to do a tax return for 2024 will be correct?

This will probably be my last time purchasing a software which I cannot trust and causes me more frustration and more of my time to even categorize one simple credit card bill and then lose my work. The number of troubleshooting discussions I see on the community are truly scary and disappointing. Thanks for listening - Marilyn

[edited to add spacing for readability]

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Marilyn D,

I'm sorry to hear you're encountering so many issues. To help troubleshoot these problems, please provide more information. When did these issues first start? Did they all start around the same time? What is the exact file location you keep your Quicken file in? You can see this in your Quicken program by going to File, then looking toward the bottom of the menu, just above the Exit option. It will list the 4 Quicken files you've most recently accessed, with the file you're currently in at the #1 position.

You mentioned that you synced to the cloud. Are you referring to the Quicken Cloud? Do you access your Quicken data through the companion apps (Quicken on the Web and the Quicken Mobile app)? If you're not referring to the Quicken Cloud, then which cloud are you syncing with and what method are you using to sync?

I look forward to your response!

Marilyn D

Q Kristina: Thank you for responding. These issues have been happening sporadically for several months. The most recent update did remove several of my memorized transactions and deleted all the split categories I had set up in 2 credit card statements. The most frustrating was changing the categories by duplicating some and deleting others within a transaction, thus changing the total, which I had just spent an hour categorizing. I am using Q cloud and find that helpful when we travel to FL for 5 weeks in the winter. I thought about retrieving that file and clicked on the cloud by mistake thinking I could get to the cloud but it synced the file with the newly kerfullfled transaction so that was my fault and no help. But I cannot understand these simple parts of Q changing. How can a sophisticated software lose transactions established in my file weeks ago? I backup my files on my desktop, on a external hard drive (not daily), in the Q cloud, with another backup cloud service, and Norton backup. I could have retrieved the cloud service backup if a night had passed since it backs up every night, but this happened immediately after I finished the credit card statement so no luck there. I did look at the most recent files but none had the timing of my backup right after doing my statement. I am about to do another credit card statement today and I am going to do a snip file of my screen before saving and before backing up. But I really should not have to do that - I need to be able to trust the software for which I am paying. Marilyn

Marilyn D

New Problem Today: I found another credit card transaction from September that moved all categories around, duplicated some and deleted others. I also found a Social Security deposit for my husband from July which had disappeared although I reconciled that transaction at the time. Also, I opened an Annual Summary which proved out - $0 balance after all income and expenses categorized and reported. I went back after fixing the credit card transactions and now my Misc category which I needed to use to handle a leftover will not appear in my report. I tried clearing all and selecting all categories; closing the report and reopening; creating a new Annual Summary report; closing Q and opening my file again - with no positive results. Totally discouraging.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your replies,

When information vanishes or changes without user input, that usually indicates either a file-specific problem, or an issue with cloud sync. About how often do these issues occur? Is there any obvious pattern to it? What is the exact file path of your Quicken file on your computer?

To start troubleshooting for file-specific issues, I suggest that you try validating and/or super validating your data file.  Please save a backup file prior to performing these steps. 

Validate: 

1. File
2. Validate and Repair File...
3. Validate File
4. Click OK
5. Close the Data Log
6. Close Quicken (leave it closed for at least 5 secs)
7. Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

If the issue persists, proceed to Super Validate. If the issue is resolved after performing validation, then please disregard the instructions to Super Validate. 

Super Validate:

1. File
2. Hold CTRL + Shift and click Validate and Repair File...
3. Super Validate File
4. Click OK
5. Close the Data Log
6. Close Quicken (leave it closed for at least 5 secs)
7. Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

Please let me know how it goes!

Marilyn D

Both the regular and super validate show no errors. What confuses me the most is how a categorized transaction I just completed, when reopened, has all categories moved around (previously alphabetized) with some deleted and some duplicated and now shows a 'split amount adjustment' which was not there when I categorized every penny of the transaction. How can such a thing happen? I now have an amount over $400 from 2 jumbled categorized credit card transactions (not downloaded from a bank but manually entered) as an uncategorized expense in my annual report because I removed the duplicated categories but have no idea which ones were deleted with amounts for each one and only have a total amount which Quicken put into this adjustment because category lines disappeared.

mshiggins

@Marilyn D you may be able to avoid the issue by doing your credit card transaction splits a different way. Please see this comment from @volvogirl for details:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20466224#Comment_20466224