please add option to not sync attachment to the cloud

tnsprin
tnsprin Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭

I've seen many people trying to report this as a problem.

I am making it a suggestion.

I do not use Mobile or Cloud options. I have no need to sync on multiple machines.

But for many of my accounts, I believe those using EWC and EWC+. every time I attach a PDF or image to a transaction it is also uploaded to the cloud. I then have to Delete it using the option "delete from cloud only". This upload also makes the attachment process slower.

I am using windows but assume this is probably true on MAC also.

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Comments

  • Arctic Hare
    Arctic Hare Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭
    @tnsprin
    I experience the exact same behaviour you have described; however, Quicken Escalated technical support claims this does not happen. They are of the position that if Web/mobile cloud sync is turned off then no sync happens unless there is corruption in the data file. I have clearly demonstrated that this issue is fully replicable with a brand new Quicken file, but Quicken Support still insists that it isn't actually synching to the cloud. This issue is now hugely problematic in the Quicken Canadian version because Quicken locks up each time it tries to sync to the cloud and one must Ctrl-Alt-Del End Task... even though I don't want anything synched to the cloud have set my preferences accordingly.
  • tnsprin
    tnsprin Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭
    I want to emphasis the slowness of adding an attachment especially under some conditions. e.g. Discover is currently slow to sync to the cloud. Adding an attachment to a transaction takes several minutes before it times out. In this case it ends up not adding to cloud because of the timeout but the delay was 3 to 5 minutes.
  • Arctic Hare
    Arctic Hare Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭
    @tnsprin
    Are you using the USA or Canadian version of Quicken. I have confirmed this is a bug with the Canadian Version. Either way, which version are you presently running? I'm running R45.18 Canadian.

    You can read my more detailed post about this issue here: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7925078/quicken-locks-up-when-attaching-files-q-win-canada-ver-r45-18#latest

    The most helpful thing that you can do to attract attention to this issue is to do both of the following:
    1. Submit a Report A Problem from the Help menu in Quicken; AND
    2. Contact Quicken Phone or Chat Support, report the issue, and get your support session connected to the Report A Problem submission.
    Doing the above two steps is really the only thing that get's attention paid to a bug/problem.
  • tnsprin
    tnsprin Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭
    I am USA user. Not I reported slowness even before mentioning it here. Recently it takes forever but doesn't end up in cloud. It apparently times out on attempt to update cloud.
  • tnsprin
    tnsprin Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭
    I am trying turning on sync, but setting none of the accounts to sync.  Seems to both speed up account updates and attachments.  And attachment did not show trying to add to cloud.  Just tried this morning so will have to see if this does continue to hold true.

    Obviously a silly mistake somewhere in the sync code if this continues to hold true
  • tnsprin
    tnsprin Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭

    Note still have ridiculous slow down when it decides to try and send attachments to transactions to the cloud. It doesn't seem to ever complete now. And have to tell it to "try to restore program" when it times out or if I try and close Upload window. I think this only for EWC+ connections like mine for Discover credit card accounts.

  • Arctic Hare
    Arctic Hare Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭

    @tnsprin: The Quicken Development team is aware of this issue - I've made a fair bit of noise about it. The issue will get more attention if other users open tickets with Quicken support. The more users that complain about a problem the more attention an issue receives and the faster it gets fixed. Posting on the forum is very helpful when it is an issue that another user can provide guideance to resolve, but in the case of programming/system issues - like this one - the issue won't get resolved until the developers fix it. There is not a strong linkage between this forum and the development team, unfortunately.

    In my case, I find that the attachment process does always complete, but it can take up to 20 minutes per attachment, even when I am attaching a tiny text file. The size and format of the attachment doesn't seem to be a factor at all. The problem has a relationship with Express Web Connect. If you don't use EWC, you won't have this issue. I use EWC and I have the issue - in spades. FWIW, my One Step Update also runs very slowly. It should take only a handful of seconds to complete, but it takes closer to five minutes to run OSU.

    I've clearly demonstrated to Quicken that the issue is with their progrm or backend/cloud systems. I can replicate the issue in a brand new Quicken file - I just have to run one One Step Update and the problem will manifest. I have 500 MBPS internet and am running Quicken on a very high end, very fast PC. I believe Quicken has finally accepted that they have a sytem problem. They thought I probably had my Quicken file on a folder synced with OneDrive, but that is not the case; I don't use OneDrive on the PC that I run Quicken.

  • trogers79
    trogers79 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    edited September 2023

    I don't save anything in Quicken to the cloud, yet when I attach a file to a transaction it always adds to be uploaded to the cloud. So, I have to click on the cloud icon and tell it to delete from the cloud. This is an extra step that is unnecessary if my settings are set not to sync to the cloud.

  • SquishyD
    SquishyD Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    I have the same issue here. It's been going on for quite some time - posts in this forum about it going back as far as 2020.

    Now with R49.29, it also appears that the workaround to "Delete from Cloud" option is gone for attachments. Any ideas as to whether Quicken finally fixed the problem of attachments being uploaded without the user's permission? Or have we simply lost the ability to delete cloud attachments entirely?

    If I cannot control which of my personal documents is being sent to Quicken's servers, that will be enough to make me abandon the platform after 15 or so years.

  • SquishyD
    SquishyD Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    I have the same issue here. It's been going on for quite some time - posts in this forum about it going back as far as 2020.

    Now with R49.29, it also appears that the workaround to "Delete from Cloud" option is gone for attachments. Any ideas as to whether Quicken finally fixed the problem of attachments being uploaded without the user's permission? Or have we simply lost the ability to delete cloud attachments entirely?

    If I cannot control which of my personal documents is being sent to Quicken's servers, that will be enough to make me abandon the platform after 15 or so years.

  • Arctic Hare
    Arctic Hare Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭

    Quicken syncs attachments to the cloud whether or not you use mobile or web. I use neither and I cannot stop it from syncing transaction attachments to the cloud.

  • Rocket J Squirrel
    Rocket J Squirrel Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    This is bad to the point of being evil. I wonder why Quicken thinks this is a good or even reasonable thing to do. I will stop adding attachments as of right now.

    Quicken user since version 2 for DOS, now using QWin Biz & Personal Subscription (US) on Win10 Pro.

  • trogers79
    trogers79 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    I saw that after the latest update. Quicken, can you advise if attachments are automatically being saved on your servers, without our permission and/or ability to delete those files.
  • tnsprin
    tnsprin Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭

    I am not sure but for me this seems to be operating correctly now. I.e. not uploading to cloud (at least not when asked to), and coming back quickly.

  • Arctic Hare
    Arctic Hare Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭

    I believe that is half true. It seems that Quicken (the company) did something that has caused the process of syncing a new attachment to the cloud to execute much faster, but Quicken (the app) is still syncing the attachments to the cloud even with mobile/web disabled. When I add and save an attachment to a transaction, I still see a brief flash of the cloud sync symbols for every attachment. Also, while I don't recall where I read it, I vaguely recall a discussion where someone from Quicken explained that the way they have built the dataflow, all attachments have to be synched to the cloud, regardless of whether the user has mobile/web enabled - the architecture requires it.

    What is an evident improvement is that now, instead of taking up to 20 minutes per attachment, it now takes less than a second. Whatever was causing the extremely long per-transaction sync time has been addressed by Quicken (or one of its service providers), but - from my perspective - there has been no change to the undesirable syncing of all attachments to the cloud, regardless of whether you use mobile/web. My understanding is that all attachments get synched to the cloud regardless of mobile/web settings and I continue to observe indication that this is what actually happens. However, If this is an incorrect understanding/assertion, I'd appreciate a Quicken Moderator jumping in here and transparently detailing the conditions under which transactions get synched to the cloud.

  • tnsprin
    tnsprin Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭

    I don't think it can be uploading in that short of time, so I don't think it doing the upload of attachments any more. I am seeing near immediate response.

  • Arctic Hare
    Arctic Hare Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭

    Even if we use a HUGE 10 Mb attachment as an example, with a 500 Mbps internet connection (with a 1 Gbps ethernet LAN connection to my PC), the file transfer time would be under one second. I'm not working with huge attachments. The quick upload speed is not infeasible. I did a test comparing a small attachment and a 10 Mb attachment and the cloud/sync symbol stayed visible longer for the 10 Mb one. Not an entirely scientific test, but…

    I have no way of knowing for certain whether the attachments are still being synched to the cloud (with mobile/web turned off), but the balance of indications is that they are.

    Perhaps one of the Quicken moderators could chime in and confirm whether attachments to transaction entries are still being synched to the cloud even with mobile/web turned off. Until someone official can state, with confidence, that is not the case, I am going to continue to believe it is the case.

    If attachments aren't being synched to the cloud with mobile/web turned off, then the Delete from Cloud (and desktop) button should be removed or grayed out when mobile/web is off. In contrast, the Delete from Cloud (and desktop) button still seems to do exactly what it pertains to do - it also flashes the cloud synch button even with mobile/web turned off.

  • SquishyD
    SquishyD Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    > @Arctic Hare said:
    > Even if we use a HUGE 10 Mb attachment as an example, with a 500 Mbps internet connection (with a 1 Gbps ethernet LAN connection to my PC), the file transfer time would be under one second. I'm not working with huge attachments. The quick upload speed is not infeasible. I did a test comparing a small attachment and a 10 Mb attachment and the cloud/sync symbol stayed visible longer for the 10 Mb one. Not an entirely scientific test, but…
    >
    > I have no way of knowing for certain whether the attachments are still being synched to the cloud (with mobile/web turned off), but the balance of indications is that they are.
    >
    > Perhaps one of the Quicken moderators could chime in and confirm whether attachments to transaction entries are still being synched to the cloud even with mobile/web turned off. Until someone official can state, with confidence, that is not the case, I am going to continue to believe it is the case.
    >
    > If attachments aren't being synched to the cloud with mobile/web turned off, then the Delete from Cloud (and desktop) button should be removed or grayed out when mobile/web is off. In contrast, the Delete from Cloud (and desktop) button still seems to do exactly what it pertains to do - it also flashes the cloud synch button even with mobile/web turned off.

    This. It's quite sad that nobody from Quicken is able to or wants to confirm the behavior of their own product. Worse, we don't have access to our own data in their cloud so we can't go look and confirm for ourselves.

    I'm sure many of us may use Quicken on a laptop that travels with us around the world, or are expats in the EU still tracking US bank accounts. This would likely be an edge case, but the inability to view and delete your own personal and financial data from Quicken's servers would seem to directlt violate GDPR rules as well.
  • Arctic Hare
    Arctic Hare Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭

    I'll cite another Quicken example that causes me to believe that the attachments are probably still synching to the cloud…

    A number of years ago, I worked extensively with Quicken's top tier of tech support on an unrelated issue (it turned out to be another bug that cost me more than a hundred hours of my time). During the course of that troubleshooting, I was often asked to use "Report a Problem" to upload a sanitized data file. However, my file wouldn't upload because it was too large… and, guess why it was too large… because Quicken's "sanitize" feature was not stripping the attachments out of the data file. I ended up proving that behaviour with the tech support person. It then took Quicken a few YEARS - yup, years, not weeks or months - to fix the "Sanitize" data file feature to remove attachments.

    That experience really troubled me because the very feature that pertained to remove personal data actually did not remove attachments. They new about the issue and then took and entirely unreasonable amount of time to fix it.

    After my experience with the Sanitize Data File feature, I am not going to assume that Quicken is no longer synching transaction attachments to the cloud until someone of authority goes on record on the matter.