Adding Asset turns on Quicken Mobile!?!?!

TomUpNorth

I have complained bitterly about problems with Quicken Mobile and I've TRIED to keep it turned off, but today again I added a new Asset and that turns ON QM and begins immediately to sync with the web. Used Windows Task Manager to abort, but on re-launch I observe that (at least) it blasted-away all my carefully constructed Memorized Payee splits. Argh.

Does anyone know how to turn OFF Mobile Sync and keep it off? It seems I have to have a QuickenID and password to use the program, but any way to BLOCK that it executes this Quicken Mobile sync bug?

Boatnmaniac

Have you confirmed that the Mobile & Web Sync preference is actually set to ON? Or is this about a dialog when adding the account that says Quicken is synching?

TomUpNorth

Both yes actually. When I Add the Asset the window pops-up that says Quicken is syncing with the cloud. Whether I let it complete, or do actually as I did this time when I saw the syncing activitiy window I did the "End Process" thing with Task Manager, then I go to Mobile & Web and see that Quicken has unhappily turned Sync from OFF to ON.

I would really like to know how to tell Quicken to never do this! I suppose I could investigate firewalling the application in Windows—I've never tried to do that before. Though I guess that would probably not fix the problem which is that somehow the act of syncing with the Cloud causes my QDF file to become corrupted (with at least the "memorized payee splits get hosed" bug and others).

TomUpNorth

OK I added an Outbound Rule to Windows to block qw.exe, and adding a "Test Asset" did start the sync process but Windows blocked it and so sync was aborted. It did again of course place the SYNC/OFF switch to ON but that page displayed next-and-immediately for me and turning it OFF was easy and obvious to do.

I'd have thought that disabling Web access would keep me from launching Quicken but it did not—maybe one of the other executables does a Verify thing and escapes my firewall rule. I will report back if this block causes me problems further down-the-road.

Boatnmaniac

I know that when Quicken is connected to the Internet it will sync financial institution information to the data file Cloud Account, especially if the account is connected via Express Web Connect or Express Web Connect+ since the login information needs to be saved on the aggregator's server. This sync does not, to the best of my knowledge, include any financial data.

I am surprised to hear that when you have Mobile & Web Sync turned OFF that Quicken will turn it ON on its own. That should not be happening. I'm thinking there must be something that is triggering that but I can't think of what that might be….at least not yet.

Have you tried running Validate & Repair? It not only can fix some data issues in the file but it can also fix some application issues.

Yes, please do post back here what you observe with Web access disabled. I would really like to better understand what the impact of that is.

TomUpNorth

>I know that when Quicken is connected to the Internet it will sync financial institution information

Thanks boatnmaniac for your feedback—it is appreciated.

I should point-out that unlike many/most here I do not do ANY linking of my Quicken finances with the web. Not banks, not credit cards, not billers—no one. Nothing. So there shouldn't be any cloud activity whatsoever with my Quicken.

I just launched Quicken again and it wants me to sign in. Very unusual for me so must have something to do with my Windows Firewall block I created yesterday. Bah, it won't let me sign in and thus won't launch for me. "Oops We are unable to contact the Quicken server…" Will have to unblock it appears.

I have done the Validate & Repair in the past and the last few times I ran it, I had errors that when I surfed here on them found they were "unrepairable" i.e. the only suggestions were to start-over which I simply cannot do. Been using Quicken since the nineties and while I've recently kept "just" 15 years of data if I've got to "start over from scratch" then I would do it with a different program!!!! 🤬

I'll try to re-validate now. OK below are two runs, the first of which suggests "no problems unresolved" but clearly run #2 indicates stuff is still broken. And just for the record, my QDF file is 72MB in size which afaict is not unusually large or unwieldy:

Validate Attempt #1:

QDF:
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Validating your data.
Quicken repaired damaged transaction index. No action required.

Summary:
Quicken repaired 1 accounts. No action required.

QEL:
No read errors.

QEL:
All internal consistency checks passed.

[Sun Jan 26 11:41:34 2025]
Maximum security reference: 65, number of securities: 8.
Correcting invalid category type for category: ACCT_e7d
Invalid category type corrected
All security references are within the normal range.

Validation has completed.

Attempt #2:

QDF:
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data record.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Damaged data block.
Validating your data.
Quicken repaired ACCT_e7d account. No action required.

QEL:
No read errors.

QEL:
All internal consistency checks passed.

[Sun Jan 26 11:44:07 2025]
Maximum security reference: 65, number of securities: 8.
Correcting invalid category type for category: ACCT_e7d
Invalid category type corrected
All security references are within the normal range.

Validation has completed.

TomUpNorth

Dunno why I've not tried this before, or why it wasn't recommended to me when I reported the above Validate errors, but… I Exported my main QDF to a QXF file and then made a new one named Test and imported the QXF, and I now have zero errors.

All my settings have been blasted-away and maybe there are other problems I'm not seeing yet, but… the QDF file size went from 72MB to just 25MB so maybe the junk has been expelled in the process huh.

[Sun Jan 26 12:04:05 2025]

File: "C:\Users\xxxxxxx\Quicken\Test"

QDF:
Validating your data.
No errors.

QEL:
No read errors.

QEL:
All internal consistency checks passed.

[Sun Jan 26 12:04:13 2025]
Maximum security reference: 12, number of securities: 12.
All security references are within the normal range.

Validation has completed.

Boatnmaniac

Thanks for confirming what I suspected might happen: With Quicken being firewalled it will not be able to connect to your Cloud Account to verify your account/subscription status nor what you are subscribed to so you cannot get logged in.

BTW, I was able to replicate this issue of Quicken turning Sync ON when adding an asset. In a test file in which Sync is set to OFF, I added a manual account for a car with no loan linked to it. When Quicken was adding the account for the car I watched as Quicken changed Sync to ON and synced with the Cloud Account.

I then set up a manual house asset (not linked to a mortgage) and the same thing happened….Quicken changed Sync to ON and synced with the Cloud Account.

IMO, this is a big bug that Quicken needs to get fixed. It also might explain why some people are posting that their data keeps getting uploaded to QWeb and QMobile when they didn't have it set up to do that.

I recommend that you go to Help > Report a problem and submit a report there about this issue. You can also copy/paste the URL for this thread there so that the Quicken team can see it here. I will be doing the same in a few minutes.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20473435#Comment_20473435

Great! I hadn't thought of exporting to QXF before. I was thinking that you might want to try doing File > Copy or backup file > Create a copy or template. This process can fix many data file issues but I think (not sure) it will also retain your data file settings. It will deactivate all of the account connections so they will need to be set up, again. Anyway, I'm glad to hear that exporting to a QXF file seems to have fixed your main issue.

Would you please try setting up a new manual asset account and see if Quicken still switches Sync from OFF to ON? My guess it it will but it would be good to confirm this.

BTW, I just now submitted the problem report to Quicken for this Sync OFF-to-ON issue. The more people who report this issue the more likely Quicken will take notice of it and do something to fix it.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, though we apologize that you are experiencing this.

We have forwarded this issue to the proper channels to have this further investigated. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) a sanitized copy of your data file in order to contribute to the investigation.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.  

(CBT-554)

TomUpNorth

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20473446#Comment_20473446

Regarding my QXF export/import success, I am finding that most (all?) of my personalized settings got wiped, including not only things like settings for register displays and toolbar buttons and such, but also all of my Bill and Income Reminders have had their preferences zapped as well in re: Auto-Enter vs. Remind Me and also my "2nd Wednesday of every month" got changed too. And all my custom reports are gone.

But since the transactions have survived intact I am going to try to use this new file as clearly beaucoup junk got cleaned-out of it somehow.

I can't imagine it fixed the "add an Asset, turn on Mobile Sync" problem but I will try that sometime when my head is not spinning as now.

I sure wish I could launch two instances of Quicken and compare Old vs. New files but alas… cross-checking things is quite cumbersome.

Boatnmaniac

You might want to try doing File > Copy or backup file > Create a copy or template. I just did it and a very quick and cursory review of the file shows that it did retain virtually all of the settings (Preferences, Reminders, Register settings, customized saved reports, etc.) of the original file. The only thing I observed that the copied file did not retain were the download connections. It could save you a lot of time and effort compared to using the file you created from the QXF file import.

TomUpNorth

Thanks but it does seem to me that when I did encounter the "impossible errors" the first time, I tried that and it didn't fix them.

I am now quite a way down-the-road in re-tweaking my "import from qxf" and it's going well so far, and in fact I tried again the "Validate" thing and Quicken thinks it's good.

Boatnmaniac

UPDATE REGARDING SYNC BEING TURNED ON WHEN ADDING AN ASSET ACCOUNT: I just now added a couple of offline Asset Accounts (house, car) to my test file and Sync did NOT turn on.

There have been a couple of version updates since the last post above in this thread. I did not see any reference to this issue in the Release Notes for either of them but depending on what the cause/fix of the issue is it might not have been dependent upon getting a version update. Regardless, it's good to see that this issue appears to have been resolved.