Corrupt Account/Categories/????

I recently discovered that one of my credit card accounts appears to be corrupted.
During one of my adventures I generated a category listing and found that some catagories looks normal i.e.
Investment
or
- Discovered during attempted reconcile.
- Manifested by unbalanced reconciliation.
- Even when "Adjusted" the next reconciliation would be unbalanced.
- Apparently corrupt Catagories file.
During one of my adventures I generated a category listing and found that some catagories looks normal i.e.
Investment
or
Interest Earned
but some were entries like:
017750C0-FD66-4C16-A780-A8591B31571E
or
632E1F22-9FFE-4B56-8566-DE6D207C14F3
I've got a hunch this is going to be a long process and this submission is see if anyone might have a suggestion as how to proceed in right direction. What more info is pertinent.
OR..... maybe it is a lost cause.... :-(
Thanks in advance....
but some were entries like:
017750C0-FD66-4C16-A780-A8591B31571E
or
632E1F22-9FFE-4B56-8566-DE6D207C14F3
I've got a hunch this is going to be a long process and this submission is see if anyone might have a suggestion as how to proceed in right direction. What more info is pertinent.
OR..... maybe it is a lost cause.... :-(
Thanks in advance....
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Unfortunately, the only solution I know of would be to revert to a backup prior to the problem surfacing, which may require some trial and error to test various backups. (Always make a copy of any backup file before you open it, so you have an untouched backup available should you need to go back to it later.)
Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue.
In regards to the reconcile issue, the root cause of a reconcile discrepancy can be difficult to troubleshoot here on the Community, without being able to actively walk through the reconciliation of the account. I can still offer a few suggestions.
First, I would look at the opening balance on the account in question. Has a new opening balance been created? Is this opening balance reconciled?
Did you ever encounter any transactions that were previously reconciled that needed to be reconciled in the following reconciliation when you noticed this issue?
In regards to the category issue,I have a few questions to help me better understand what could be happening to collect more information.
First, may I ask that you navigate to Quicken > Preferences > Connected services and select the blue "Reset" to reset the cloud.
After this has been completed, are the categories still incorrect?
As far as you're able to tell does this seem to affect all manually created categories or there any parent categories in the category list that have not been changed?
To view the category list, please navigate to Window > Categories.
Please let me know!
-Quicken Tyka
Thanks,
Norm
Might a corrupt CATEGORIES file be the problem?
Trying to do a little research on the original problem of a corrupt CATEGORIES list/file.
I wanted to compare my corrupt CATEGORY listing with a brand new category list so I loaded Quicken onto my laptop. (Working(?) copy of Quicken is on an iMac).
It was a bit of struggle (my laptop initial install was Quicken 15 and I was told my account had expired so I could't upgrade to 2020. ....
.... funny because quicken.com said I was good until 2021 and my iMac was running 2020. Anyway a couple restarts and such 2020 up and running on the laptop.
Back to the original situation.....again....
The newly installed laptop Quicken appears to have a pristine CATEGORY list (Yippe? or so what?)
My quest it so see how the corrupt CATEGORIES file differs from the pristine file.
Soooo... now that I can compare Corrupt to Pristine.....
#1 question is.... can a corrupt CATEGORIES file be edited by a user?
#2 if so... might there be any chance of the previously corrupted CATEGORY file being resurrected in order to regaining a functional app using a previously corrupt Quicken Credit Card account?
Hope I didn't loose too many folks.
Thanks,
Putter
Did you follow the steps @Quicken_Tyka posted five posts above this? I don't see that you ever replied to her post. She has been monitoring the users who report this corruption and gathering data to pass on to the developers.
AND thanks Jacobs for jumping in.
=================================
I've been following Tyka's suggestions with some interesting results. None of which (so far) help. The journey has been interesting but only raised a few more questions. I'm pretty sure my conjecture that something is corrupted is true and slowly I am getting tired of exploring and hoping for the best. :-/
I did delete the unused categories and confirm there was an opening balance adjustment.
OBTW... appears Quicken's support on HOW TO was only for windows but a bit of Googling and found it was even simpler Mac instructions.
I did reconcile but I didn't notice and transactions that needed to be re-reconciled but I may have missed them. Didn't really understand that one.
I did the reset but didn't notice anything. That categories (neither manual or standard)
didn't correct as far as I can tell.
During the process of attmepint to remove the corrupted catagory names I did get each time I restored a catagory name from corrupt to "factory installed" I would get..
Don't have a clue as to whether I should your shouldn't have but I did MERGE them.
THEN!!!! I noticed that the Top portion of the Corrupted list (on the iMac) wasn't there (as it was on the new catagory list on the laptop. If when I get time I will try and create a few of the missing "Factory Installed" and see what happen.
Kind of a fun ride so far... but I haven't left the barn really. :-)
Thanks again to both of you.
I downloaded a backup and once again got the corruption on running the Update Accounts routine.
I then deleted the corrupted accounts and recreated them. For three days Quicken did not even recognize 2 of 3 accounts in one credit union account. After more deletion and recreation Quicken finally saw all 3 accounts and downloaded correctly (I think)
Two days later the dowloads are again corrupted for the credit union accounts
When I first recreated the accounts for download Quicken added my login ID to the account name and listed that in the register, but only did that for the checking account, not the savings. In addition I have a money market account and that too was altered with an incorrect balance and deposits and withdrawals that were not a correct.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report your issue, I just want to clarify what exactly you are experiencing.
Are you encountering changes to the categories in your Quicken file? Are the categories now listed in a style similar to the examples below?
017750C0-FD66-4C16-A780-A8591B31571E
632E1F22-9FFE-4B56-8566-DE6D207C14F3
If you are encountering something different, please create a new post for better visibility.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7849429/how-to-add-a-post-to-the-community
Be sure to include a description of the issue, any error messages as well as the version of Quicken.
The more information you can provide will help the Community to better understand and assist.
Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka
It has been decades (I used to work with punch cards) since I played the DB games. I am sure I will get the terminology screwed up but I will jump in regardless. :-)
I ASSUME:
That QUICKEN is a Relational DB application. (sounds like SQL powered maybe)
That each of the selections available under Quicken's WINDOW menu is a DB table (forgot what those are called ... indexes?) unto itself.
That the Category List is a DB Table containing the fields pertinent
That users can manipulate the Category List by adding/deleting/modifying the data in those fields.
That some of us have a corrupted Category Lists.
That MAYBE...just Maybe a user could modify the Category List and restore the functionality that is corrupt/missing/????
It is a low probability but maybe restoring Category List Table to its original form and content MIGHT just MIGHT fix something. (I've been witness to that type of thing a few times before)
I am fairly sure I can modify the man readable offending text fields contents and replace them with the original text characters
Will this work???? I'm not betting my IRA on it. :-). But you never know. Quite a bit of the world around us has been designed by geniuses to be used by those of us who might feel like lesser geniuses.
If the Quicken data base is still in functional but filled with corrupt data then maybe there is a chance. Yuhjustneverknow. :-)
/s/ a MUCH MUCH lesser genius. :-)
I was originally working with just one credit card account because that was where I first saw the problem.
Well... I decided to examine another credit cards and then some checking accounts.
All appear to have about the same types of problems.
And as I look back... Just as ddcolby1 said... I first noticed the problem after the last upgrade.
1. I have backups but I am really not looking forward to restoring (copies of the backup of course) if my current version of quicken is the problem.
(Mac)
Version 5.17.3 (Build 517.34913.100)...macOS 10.15.6
Either a very few of us are down right unlucky or there is going to be a lot more "interest" in this.
Thank you for your response and additional information.
There have been a handful of posts on this issue and it is currently being researched however this is no immediate fix.
The good news is so far, most users have reported that either restoring a backup or manually editing the categories has been enough to correct the issue.
If you sync to mobile, you may want to see if the steps in a previous discussion work to correct the issue for you.
Let me know how it goes!
-Quicken Tyka
I am not the confident in my current Quicken installation/data file and intend to:
- delete/reinstall the app
- load a backup data file
then go from there.If you think this unwise please let me know.
Thanks, Putter
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Home & Business
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP