Can a Quicken Mac file be _completely_ disconnected from the cloud?

yobyot
yobyot Member ✭✭
I have two Macs. Mac A is where I have the "production" version of my Quicken file. Mac B (a MBP) is where I want to restore the latest copy of the file backed up from Mac A so I can view and report on it.

Every time I do this (restore on Mac B and view), when I return to Mac A, I get a dialog that tells me it's an older file and I can "take it offline" or reset it. In either case, chaos ensues. Taking it offline doesn't work and resetting it loses download capabilities for some (but not all accounts).

I've tried setting up two different cloud accounts but even when I rename one of them, the file that's been restored on Mac B still "gets ahead" somehow of the file on Mac A.

How can I use a read-only restore of a Mac file on a second computer without messing with the cloud, which is turned off (it's never worked right in my decades of using the Windows version and is much worse in the Mac version).

Answers

  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    I do the same workflow, but I only see this request to reset on the primary computer if I have done an account update on the secondary. If I do have to reset, I don't lose any connectivity, but all Quicken Connect accounts download a whole slew of duplicate transactions that I have to delete. B

    Things I may be doing differently that is helping in my case:
    1. I don't restore from a backup. I unzip a zip of the primary file I made on Mac A.
    2. I have Sync turned off in Preferences > Mobile, Web & Alerts
    3. I avoid doing account updates on Mac B.

    I don't think you can change the cloud account on just one machine to get around this. Would love to hear any other ideas.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • yobyot
    yobyot Member ✭✭
    Thanks, @RickO. Said another way, even with subscription not limiting the number of Macs one can use Quicken on, you can only have one cloud account and the design is so poor that you cannot associate different files with different cloud accounts. I was on the Windows version for decades (until M1 made Windows virtualization largely impossible) and thought I'd get something better with the Mac version.

    Big mistake.
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    yobyot said:
    you can only have one cloud account and the design is so poor that you cannot associate different files with different cloud accounts. 
    No, you can have multiple cloud accounts each associated with a different file. But you can't have the same file associated with different cloud accounts on different machines. When you copy/restore a single file to another machine, its cloud account goes with it. That's what messes up our workflow. I don't know any way to disassociate copy #2 with the primary cloud account and give it its own separate cloud account. 
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • yobyot
    yobyot Member ✭✭
    Suppose Mac A’s file is named A and Mac B’s file is named B. Then on Mac B you restore A into B. The issues happen. This means that the cloud account follows the file _even when it’s restored into a differently file with a different name._

    Brain dead.
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Not sure what you mean by "restore A into B". When you restore a backup, you tell it where to put the restored file, which is not an existing Quicken file. The restored file has the same internal file ID as the original and hence connects to the same Quicken cloud account.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • yobyot
    yobyot Member ✭✭
    In my case, I restore A in to B, meaning that the restored file has a new name: B.

    The fact that a restored file retains the same even when the filename changes _is_ the design flaw.
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Yes, restoring to a different file name doesn't change the internal file ID and hence doesn't change the associated cloud account. I agree, it would be much better if when you restore to a different file name, it creates (or at least gives you the option to create) a new cloud account.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @yobyot As I mentioned above, I can avoid having to reset on Mac A if I'm careful to not perform any online functions on Mac B. But occasional I inadvertently trigger an online connection and then end up needing to reset Mac A when I open the file there. It's actually not a big deal except that end up with a bunch of duplicate transactions that I have to identify and delete.

    But I just noticed something about those duplicates. The FITID for the existing transactions that were duplicated was not in the same form as the the newly downloaded ones, nor the same as the existing non-duplicated transactions. (FITID is a column you can enable and is used by Quicken to avoid downloading the same transaction twice.) Here's an example:



    The solution was to delete the existing transaction and retain the newly downloaded copy. In the case where the existing transaction was auto matched, reject the auto transaction match, then manually match the new download to the existing manual transaction, deleting the older download.

    Now when a reset is needed, the newly downloaded transactions' FITIDs match and they don't get duplicated in the register. This seems to have solved the duplication on reset issue for me. I supposed I could have just waited for 90 days for these problem transactions to stop downloading, but this fixed it right away.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • yobyot
    yobyot Member ✭✭
    Thanks for all the effort and explanation, @RickO. But this clearly is _not_ a useful or even sustainable workaround. The bottom line is, unlike almost any other app I can think of, backups of Quicken data are tied to the machine on which they were created.

    This is brain-dead beyond belief.
  • yobyot
    yobyot Member ✭✭
    Forgot to mention: had an email exchange with the Quicken product manager who stopped responding as soon as this was made clear. The dev team has clearly circled its wagons around this design and they are apparently sticking with it no matter how insane it is shown to be in everyday use.
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @yobyot I did not mean to imply that I like it or don't wish it were different in such a way to better accommodate those who use a reference copy of their file on another machine. But I do understand the reason for the design. They really are trying to prevent users from working in an older version of a file and then can't figure out why there is missing data. There apparently have been a lot of support requests in this area.

    Perhaps what we need is a "this file is the most current" button on the Reset dialog so you are not forced to ether reset or take offline (if you really understand what you're doing). Maybe they'll consider that.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    Now that I think about it, what I described above to stop the duplicates wasn't really a workaround. It was a one-time fix needed because apparently the FITID format had changed in those accounts.

    When I do a Reset on Mac A, I do not lose any download ability on my existing accounts. I'm not sure why this is happening to you, but that may be some kind of bug. It may be something you should explore with Quicken Support.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
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