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EXTREMELY dangerous behavior from sync!

msoultan

The other day I was helping my friend and I noticed that the Category field for invoices was populated with Consulting Income (Business) instead of - - Form - -, and it was like this for invoices all the way back to 2019! I then clicked on the invoice, and I noticed that the Item, Category, Description, QTY, and Rate fields were all empty, but there was still a value under Amount.

I then pulled some backups and I noticed that this behavior started around 2/19/2025, but what was interesting is that she was sure that she was entering invoices correctly, so it would seem like ever since that date an invoice would be entered correctly, but then mysteriously lose all of its data.

After a LOT of hair pulling and trying different things, I finally figured out what had happened - I entered in an invoice (with all the associated data) and then I quit Quicken and it asked me to sync, and it was after the sync that it would wipe out all of the data in the invoice!

Needless to say, this is extremely bad behavior! Why is this happening, and now how do we fix all the invoices that were messed up??

Thanks,

Mike

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Quicken Anja

Hello @msoultan,

We appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to our attention!

I've attempted to replicate this issue but was not able to do so, and I will need to gather some additional information to further investigate.

Does your friend sync to the Quicken Cloud for the purpose of using the Quicken Mobile app and/or Quicken on the Web?
Where is their Quicken data file stored? Is it on their local hard drive (C: Drive) or a cloud-based/external drive (e.g.: OneDrive, DropBox, USB, etc.)?
Have they/you attempted any troubleshooting steps so far? If so, what were they?
Were there any significant changes to their system or software before the issue began (updates, new installations, etc.)?
Were you able to replicate this issue in your own Quicken data file?

Check back and let us know! Thank you.

msoultan

Hi Anja,

Thanks for the quick response. Here are the answers to your questions:

Does your friend sync to the Quicken Cloud for the purpose of using the Quicken Mobile app and/or Quicken on the Web?

I believe that the intent was to have it sync with the cloud as somewhere else to have her data stored. She doesn't actually use any web/cloud interfaces.

Where is their Quicken data file stored? Is it on their local hard drive (C: Drive) or a cloud-based/external drive (e.g.: OneDrive, DropBox, USB, etc.)?

It's stored in the normal location on a PC (c:\users\[username]\Documents\Quicken)

Have they/you attempted any troubleshooting steps so far? If so, what were they?

The only troubleshooting step we took was disabling sync once we found out that was what was wiping out her data.

Were you able to replicate this issue in your own Quicken data file?

I used to have Sync enabled, but after I saw what it was doing on her computer (which is completely unrelated to my system), I got worried and disabled it. As far as I know my data is in-tact, but unless I were to scour every bit of my data and somehow compare it to past data (which would be prohibitively difficult), I have no way of knowing what the sync interface may or may not be doing to my data. Until it is understood why it's wiping out her data, I won't turn it back on.

My worry with this type of issue is that something in your cloud interface is not working correctly such that it thinks remote data should overwrite local data, even though there can be no remote data (i.e. because an invoice was created locally). In other words, there is a major issue with your local-to-cloud connector.

We are happy to do more testing and I'm more than happy to backup her current file and try re-enabling sync if someone from your dev team wants to see what is happening through a remote session.

This is just really scary because now we don't know what else might have broken, and it's not like we can easily go to a backup because that's two months worth of data that would be lost to get back to the date before sync was enabled. Ideally we're hoping that someone at Quicken has a way of looking at her older data files and fixing her data as it looks like it's a bug in the sync system that is wiping out her data.

thanks,

Mike

Quicken Anja

Thank you for providing all of those details!

Before you perform any troubleshooting, please save a backup just to be safe.

Since this is occurring with Cloud Sync, you can try resetting the cloud data from the Quicken desktop program and see if that may make a difference. However, please note that if she isn't syncing to the Quicken Cloud for the purpose of using the Quicken Mobile app or Quicken on the Web, then it is okay to simply leave sync off completely and not sync to the Cloud since the only purpose it serves is to transport data to the Mobile and Web apps. You can find more information on this here.

If you do decide to proceed with a cloud reset, first, verify that the Dataset name and the File name match each other identically by navigating to Edit > Preferences > Quicken ID & Cloud Accounts (see below).

If they do not match, please click Edit dataset name and change the Dataset name to match the File name exactly the same (do not copy the file extension: ".QDF").

Then, click OK in the preferences window and proceed to save a backup. From there, please follow the steps below to reset your cloud data.

On the desktop program go to Edit
Preferences...
Mobile & Web
Make sure Sync shows it's ON and click on Reset your cloud
On the following screen you can leave the preselected option for "No, just reset my Cloud data", type Yes in the entry field to confirm, and click Reset
Wait for the sync reset to finish
Navigate to the Mobile & Web dropdown menu
Select Cloud Sync to resync your data and to make sure no errors occur

Once that is done, see if the issue still persists.

Let us know how it goes!

Quicken Anja

Hello again,

We haven't heard back from you in a while. Do you still need assistance?

Thank you!

Quicken Anja

Hello again,

Due to the lack of response, I went ahead and closed this post.

If you still require assistance, please feel free to start a new post.

Thank you!

Quicken Anja

Hello again,

As per your request here, this thread has been reopened.

Thank you!

msoultan

Thanks for reopening the post.

I guess my real issue with this is that Quicken isn't doing anything to actually verify that there is a data consistency issue between the local data and the cloud data. If I'm having to go into settings to verify that the file name is or is not the the same, that should be the very first thing that Quicken should be checking before it even tries to do a sync, right? This seems like a trivial check that could have saved a LOT of headaches.

And if quicken notices a large amount of data that is inconsistent with what's stored in the cloud, it should really throw an error to ask if the user wants to proceed. But doing stuff like wiping out invoice data and just leaving the shell of an invoice should never be allowed to happen - this seems like really strange behavior that an automated system should be able to detect before silently wiping out user data.

Further, this doesn't provide a solution as to how to fix the problem that was caused by Quicken's cloud sync - this is years worth of data that is now lost.