Turning off on-line actions/activities

tmplee · August 2019

I've started getting familiar with "new" Quicken for Mac (5.12.2). All too often, and for too long, at unpredictable times I get the spinning beach ball (for instance, just in switching from one account to another.) On a hunch, I turned off my wi-fi so I was off-line, and the spinning beach ball didn't come up anymore. I don't want to completely disconnect my machine for the internet just to improve Quicken's performance. Is there any way to tell it to "go off-line" once it has verified my account (if it needs to.) I don't download any transactions or use on-line bill paying; I haven't decided whether I want to use the mobile app, but even if I did it would only have to go on-line to update the Quicken Cloud database every now and then. Actually, I wouldn't mind, and would prefer, not have my data in the cloud at all.

RickO · August 2019

Go to Preferences > Mobile, Web & Alerts and turn off the Sync master switch. See if that helps.

tmplee · August 2019

@RickO Thanks, but it was already off (I never turned it on.) I see now that turning the wifi off doesn't completely stop the spinning beachball, so I don't know what it's trying to do that has it putting that up. I tried importing (creating a new file from) a different QM 2007 file and noticed in the process one of the panes asks whether you want to use Mobile or Web or not. I don't remember how I answered that the first time, but this second time I clearly selected "no" — it still went ahead and created a QCS account for the new file and I still have the spinning beachball.

RickO · August 2019

Since you say you are still getting the beachball with wifi off, it would seem that an online process is not the cause after all.

Do you have the account value graph displayed in any investment accounts' portfolio view? I know that can be a processor intensive activity. You can hide it by pulling the little dot under the graph to the top.

If you are tech-savvy, you could try reading the console logs for Quicken when the beachball occurs to see if that gives you a clue. Otherwise, I think contacting Quicken support would be your best bet.

smayer97 · August 2019

BTW, a QCS account MUST be created at part of the registration process for Quicken. But no data is stored online.

tmplee · August 2019

@smayer97 Understand. It would appear that it actually does that whenever you create a new file, not just when you first use Quicken, whether or not you've enabled mobile/web access.

tmplee · August 2019

@RickO I believe I've identified part of what is causing the beachball. I just read somewhere that Quicken updates security prices at a lot of different times, if you have it set to automatic update. Included in that is when you first start Quicken and then, at least, whenever you bring up an investment window. I have roughly 200 securities across 3 different brokerages, so of course it takes a lot of time to get those prices. QM 2007 has the ability to update prices on a user-defined schedule, which is very nice, but it doesn't look like "new" Quicken does. It is scriptable, but a cursory scan of its scripting dictionary indicates it doesn't seem to have anything like "update security prices".

smayer97 · August 2019

You are correct. That is actually more precise. Each data file gets registered.

This also points out that backed up files need to be opened and registered too.

RickO · August 2019

tmplee said:

@RickO I believe I've identified part of what is causing the beachball. I just read somewhere that Quicken updates security prices at a lot of different times, if you have it set to automatic update. Included in that is when you first start Quicken and then, at least, whenever you bring up an investment window.

To my knowledge, that's not correct. Yes, it does update when you open the file. But I don't think it updates every time you view an investment account; only when you UPDATE an investment account. I doubt this is the cause of the beachball. Sorry.

tmplee · August 2019

@RickO Well, here's what the Quicken help file says: "By default, security prices are updated automatically when you launch Quicken or click on an investment account." What it doesn't say is whether that update is selective in any sense, e.g. only updates securities in the account, or only happens if it was x seconds after the previous update.

RickO · August 2019

Interesting. I'm not sure that help file statement is correct. Later it says "If you opt out of automatic quote updates, Quicken will not attempt to download quotes and prices history when you launch Quicken."

In any case, I don't think this would cause the beachball unless you have a really slow internet connection.

tmplee · August 2019

@RickO Well, with QM 2007 you get a progress bar when it is uploading security prices, so you can see what it's doing. It took 20.3 seconds to download the prices for 202 securities and 15.9 seconds to process them. While I would expect (rash expectation?) "new" Quicken to process faster, the download time would be the same, and that very definitely would account for the spinning beachball. My internet connection is fast enough to watch live TV, so I doubt that's what's causing the downloads to take so long. I'm guessing it's just that the server is very busy.

Turning off on-line actions/activities

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