File corruption from Ver. 5.18.0? Running Catalina on MacBook pro

Upgraded to most Recent Quicken, Priemer 2020 on-line from 2007 in February 2020. Have/had 27 years of data both inventment and other accounts all manually entered. The new Quicken gradually gained my liking and ran smoothly - was impressed.
Then installed ver. 5.18.0 last Wednesday and the investment Portfolio screen failed to update prices and display gain/losses, etc. Happened immediately. Also discovered the Rule function for transfer entries stopped working.
Spent about 3-4 hours with Support. We tried the failed functions on a saved backup from 3 months prior with no success. Am now told my file is corrupted most probably as it is too large. Directed to start a new file and not use the old at all as it may become more corrupted.
It seems installing ver. 5.18.0 corrupted the data file. Installing ver. 5.18.1 did not help.
Can my file be fixed?
Or, any other ideas?

Much appreciate any help.

Paul

Comments

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    First, do not accept the answer that your file is either too large or corrupted. Unfortunately, some Quicken Support agents do that to end/resolve a situation they can't solve, but it should be unacceptable for them to tell a user to throw out 27 years of data. Also, know that many of us here have similar amounts of data and large data files from Quicken 2007. (My Quicken 2007 data file repeatedly told me my transaction file was full, and I need to delete transactions just to continue using Quicken 2007.) The modern Quicken Mac should handle files much larger than Quicken 2007.

    I haven't seen any reports of file corruption with version 5.18 here on this forum, but that doesn't mean you haven't stumbled into some bug that hasn't been reported yet.

    The first thing I would do is recover. You should be able to go back to version 5.17.6. when you installed the update, the installer moved your old Quicken application to your Trash. If you haven't emptied your Trash since last Wednesday, you'll find it in there; I believe the file name is "Quicken (517.34958.100)" if you were running the latest version prior to 5.18. If you did empty your Trash, do you have a Time Machine backup of your Mac? You should be able to recover the application from there by going back in time prior to last Wednesday. Similarly, when Quicken updates a version, if automatically creates a copy of your data file. (If your data file is stored in Quicken's default location of your User Library folder, it will be in User Library > Application Support > Backups > Automatic Backups and will have a name like "BACKUP (Pre-Update) - [your file name] [date].quickenbackup".)

    So I would try to get your 5.17.6 application and your 5.17.6 data file back from the dead, install them, verify that everything is okay with your data -- and then we can discuss what to do to cautiously try to move forward again to version 5.18.1.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Paul W
    Paul W Member ✭✭
    Jacob.
    WoW. Thank you. I've found the app and can find the file. Assume I should delete the 5.18.1 version; install the 5.17.6 version and open the Pre-Update file. Will try that tomorrow afternoon - will be off the ceiling by then. Am breathing again and feeling much better. Interestingly my first Tech Help (Brian) said the file was most likely OK and the second almost gave me a heart attack. :) Will let you know the results.
    Paul
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @Paul W  Glad you seem to have the pieces to get back to a safe place. One thing I suggest as an added measure of security, in case anything goes wrong, is to make a "safe copy" of both the application and the data file before you try to use them. By safe copy, I mean in the Finder using File > Compress to create a .zip file for both the app and data file. This prevents either from being accidentally launched, and a simple double-click on a .zip file restores it should you need to make another attempt to use it.

    If you get back up and running with 5.17.6 and verify that your data seems okay, then with backups in place, I'd try downloading the 5.18.1 update again and see if the update to your data file works cleanly or not. It may be a fluke conversion problem hit you, or there might be a bug. (Or you can wait a week or so to see if there's another bug fix release. ;) )

    Post back and let us know how it goes.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Paul W
    Paul W Member ✭✭
    @Jacobs. Worked. Thank you. Will stay with 5.17 for a few days and then try to make 5.18 work. For some reason when I tried to update originally, Quicken made 3 Backup (Pre-Update files) only the first was in fact the original file. Little confusing. Good idea to make a zip file rather than just a duplicate as locating what one needs is much less confusing. When restoring the data file, I put it on the desk top while Quicken seemed to also put a copy in the back-up folder but that file would not open correctly. Closed Quicken and moved the operable file to the Back-up folder (103.4 mb). Works as advertised. Interestingly the Quicken file is 49.3 mb. The marvels of technology.
    Again. Thank you very much. I'll let you know what happens. Stay safe.
  • ada
    ada Member
    I ran into the exact same issue and I am incensed by the clueless technical support/call center and more so by Quicken. This is the second time in two months that investment accounts are not updating properly due to their releases. I need help walking thru these instructions as I have 25 years of data I can't risk. Where do I turn?
  • markda
    markda Member ✭✭
    same problem here and I've already emptied the trash. I was told to manually delete and re-enter all of the securities. Um, yeah....
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @markda  Do you have any form of backup of your computer? Time Machine? Cloud backup like iDrive or Backblaze? If not, although it won't help you today, I strongly encourage implementing some form of backup as soon as you can. Computer disasters lurk around many corners, and it's only a matter of time until a computer dies, a hard drive fries, a corruption occurs, or user error messes something up. Backup is relatively inexpensive insurance against the angst of these inevitable problems.

    Time Machine is crazy-simple: plug in a hard drive, and when the Mac asks if you want to use it for Time Machine, say yes. Done! It will back up your whole Mac, and then do incremental backups every hour. There's nothing you need to do with Time Machine, until that day when you need to retrieve something from the past. If you don't have one, you can get a large hard drive for $100 or less, an dit's the best investment you can make to avoid heartache somewhere down the line.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • markda
    markda Member ✭✭
    I do have plenty of backups, and agree they're critical to have. I'm sure if I could just go back to the previous rev of Quicken I'd be all set. Still, hoping Quicken sorts this lookup problem, and after that I'll just stop letting it auto update :)
  • Paul W
    Paul W Member ✭✭
    Jacobs. Many thanks for your assistance. Decided to try updating to 5.18.2 yesterday after my difficulties back in September. Update went well and only problem noted is that security prices would not uniformly update. Talking with Help (Grant )(good man) we confirmed that only those securities selected as Mutual Funds or Stocks in the Security Detail window will update. It is, apparently, a known problem - but took time to find it. Hopefully the bug will be fixed someday. Also showed Grant how to retrieve the supplemented app from trash and revert after a failed update. He had no idea that was possible - it should be common knowledge... Again. Many thanks.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @Paul W Yes, the issue of securities other than Mutual Funds or Stocks not updating has been posted by Quicken. You can read about it here. They say it's a known issue, but have no estimate on when it will be resolved.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
This discussion has been closed.