Placeholder Error Message & Lockup When Updating Accounts online

Orion13

Windows 10 Home OS
Acer G3-605
Quicken R61.17 Build 27.1.61.17 (installed this morning)

When I try to update any account balance online, my system gives a "you cannot transfer into your mutual fund account prior to a placeholder transaction", the freezes/locks up. I need to use ctrl-alt-delete to end the program - which indicates that it is not responding. I've left it try for 10 minutes at times to wait it out. I've check that my show hidden investment transaction box is checked. It is. I've looked for any new place holder transactions. There are no new ones. Unfortunately, I do have about 250 placeholder transactions from over the last 15 years scattered throughout a 401K account I track. Nothing recently has posted as a placeholder on that. Like I said, those transactions have been in my history a long time, and caused no errors.

The "You Cannot transfer…" error also came up today as I tried to remove and re-establish one of my dozen or so account update links. The program locks up while on the remove online setup screen, and when I check after I've soft reset the program, the account is still connected to the online provider.

Please help. Most of the responses to similar issues concentrate regarding having an erroneous placeholder transaction being the culprit. But I've not had PHs placed recently, and all had been updating fine without a message for a very long time. And the error mentioning a mutual fund transaction when no transaction is being made seems like a programming problem rather than a user entry.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Orion13,

That sounds like a frustrating issue. To help troubleshoot this, please provide more information. When did you first notice this problem? Was there anything that happened just before this issue started, such as a program/computer update or unexpected shutdown? Does this happen when updating all accounts? If you update accounts one financial institution at a time, do you encounter the same issue?

I look forward to your response!

Orion13

Hi Quicken Kristina,

The problem was first noticed today, 2/9/25, in the morning. I am not sure of the exact time.

No system updates ran prior to the problem beginning.

Quicken did update itself this morning prior to having the problem. I was last using Quicken last weekend and was not experiencing the issue.

I have only had the issue happen when starting the update for a single account. However, many times for the past several years when I update one account, several other accounts update at the same time. I have not tried or tested the event with updating multiple accounts at one time.

Is there anything else you require information wise?

UKR

If you haven't done so already, please do the following actions:

1. Even if you are on the latest software level already, download and install the latest Manual Patch file from https://www.quicken.com/support/update-and-patch-20182019-release-quicken-windows-subscription-product to ensure your Quicken software is up to date and correctly installed.
2. Reboot Windows.
3. Start Quicken. Do not run One Step Update.
4. Run BOTH Validate and Supervalidate to attempt to repair your Quicken data file. It may have been damaged as a result of all these crashes.
5. If nothing helps, try to restore your Quicken data file from an Automatic or Manual backup taken just prior to the problems first occurring. https://www.quicken.com/support/how-backup-or-restore-your-quicken-data

Validate and Supervalidate instructions
First save a backup file prior to performing these steps
Validate: 
• Click File
• Select Validate and Repair File...
• Select Validate File
• If the data file contains investment accounts also select "Rebuild investing lots".
• If you suspect that a damaged Quotes Price History causes your problems, also select "Correct investing price history" functions "Delete" or "Repair and Rebuild".
• Click OK
• Review the Data Log. Anything interesting in there, worthwhile posting here?
• Close Quicken, leave it closed for about 30 secs
• Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

Super Validate:
• Click File
• Press and hold both CTRL and Shift keys while you click Validate and Repair File...
• Select Supervalidate File
• Click OK
• Review the Data Log. Anything interesting in there, worthwhile posting here?
• Close Quicken, leave it closed for about 30 secs
• Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

mshiggins

@Orion13 I have seen some really good responses to strange issues like your placeholder issue over on the Quicken Reddit. You might want to post there to see if you get different solutions than what has been suggested here.

Orion13

I deleted some questionable placeholder transactions that were really old. Also, the next time I ran an account update I started the update and walked away for several hours. When I came back, the account update had completed and there were no errors. I'm interested to see what Quicken Kristina thinks the problem was, but I saw no posts after I provided additional answers.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

It is just speculation, but it's possible that the questionable placeholder transactions were part of the issue, since if data is damaged, it can result in unexpected behavior, slowness, and errors. Less likely, but also possible, is if there was some change on the financial institution side, such as a minor formatting change, that caused the One Step Update to take longer than usual, and interrupting that update before it was completed may have caused the error messages you were seeing.

I hope this helps!