A Question

"Steve Dawson" wrote

I didn't have the problem, but some time ago I was able to create a situation in which I would get that message. But the situation I created was slightly different than what you describe.

If you create a new Single Mutual Fund account and do not designate a security for the account when you create it, then try to transfer money to the account, you will get the message you saw. (I'm not sure, but I think it might be possible that if you started with a SMF account with no security, then changed the account to not be a SMF account, you might still get that message when you tried a transfer to the account.)

Is it possible that the new category you created is very similar in name to a Single Mutual Fund account you have (had) ... and that you allowed Quicken's "complete fields" feature to fill in the account category for the investment account instead of your actual new category?

I don't think so. More data means more data that can get corrupted, but I don't know of any case where size, per se, was shown to be the cause of corruption.

Have you tried any of that (validate and super validate. I would first try copying the database and then working on that copy)? What were the results?

Normally db copy, validate and super validate resolves most problems. Since you didn't bother to tell us what you tried and what were the results we can only speculate...

The size limit of the QDF file is the limit of the underlying file system size. Files don't corrupt themselves simply because they are big. However as you approach the limits (what is NTFS's limit now a days? 4 gig?) corner cases can occur.

Steve Dawson wrote: Greetings All,

I've been using Quicken since Parson's Technology Money Counts was merged with it. My data (QDF) file is around 38M and I've started noticing some strange happenings. For example it will let me create a new category for expenses but when I go to add a transaction that uses the category it tells me I can't use that account since I don't have a position in it. Quicken tech support (what a laugh!) is useless. They only say validate and then supervalidate and then export and import the data which causes such corruption that I would be better off starting from scratch.

Have you tried any of that (validate and super validate. I would first try copying the database and then working on that copy)? What were the results?

I have 2 questions. First has anyone had this problem and found a solution. Normally db copy, validate and super validate resolves most problems. Since you didn't bother to tell us what you tried and what were the results we can only speculate...

Second is there a size limit where the QDF file starts to corrupt itself?

The size limit of the QDF file is the limit of the underlying file system size. Files don't corrupt themselves simply because they are big. However as you approach the limits (what is NTFS's limit now a days? 4 gig?) corner cases can occur.

-- Andrew DeFaria Avoid unnecessary, unessential and needless repetition and redundancy.

When the Quicken Loan Wizard creates a loan payment, it is a split, with the principal portion of the payment being a "transfer" to the loan. Have you checked the loan setup to see if that transfer is correct?

Have checked the loan setup and all was well. Don't know where to go next, and Quicken support doesn't have any ideas beyond the copy and validate routine I mentioned in my first email. They do say I could export my data and then import it but have told me up front that the data may wind up more corrupted than I have now. Don't want to throw all those years of data out but it's looking like the only option now. Wish I knew the file structure and I'd write a chunk of code to go open the file, and then write it back out a tuple at a time with a display of each tuple for validation.

Steve Dawson