Another One Step Update Error - TD Ameritrade (Schwab)

Ignore this message. I think I found out what was wrong, and I created new Schwab accounts. I'll try setting up Quicken for this after Sept 5 when the merger has completed.

I'll post back after I do this, either stating that it works or asking for help again.

Here I am again, asking for help again. I'm not getting it to work.

All four of my TD Ameritrade accounts now exist on the Schwab web site, with correct information on their contents. I have all their new Schwab account numbers and I have the correct user IDs and password. Three of the accounts are sort of lumped together and I can access all three of them when I log into one. The fourth account is my wife's IRA and I have to log into that separately with her user ID and password.

So all seems fine on the Schwab web site. But I can't get it to work correctly in Quicken. This is what I've done:

I went to Quicken Accounts, and clicked Add Account. It asked for an institution and I select Schwab. It has me sign into Schwab and authorize it to let Quicken access my accounts. I did.

** It then says "Your accounts have been authorized successfully!" and brought me back to Quicken where it shows me all three of my accounts. One of them looks fine, but under "Nickname in Quicken" the other two have the names of unrelated accounts at other institutions (I don't think the nickname issue is related to my problem, but I thought I would mention it just in case).

Under Action, Link to Existing Account is selected. I click next and wait. And wait. And wait.

After about an hour of waiting when nothing happened, I figured that something was wrong, so I shut down Quicken, restarted it, and started over. I got to the same place as the paragraph about with ** at its beginning but this time the drop-down box under Action is gone, and instead it says "Don't add to Quicken" and provides no ability to change it.

One (just one) of the four accounts has been added to Quicken (the one without the incorrect nickname, if it matters), but with a zero balance and no transactions.

So what did I do wrong? Did I just nor wait long enough the first time I tried this? How can I fix it.

I'm about to delete the useless zero-balance added Schwab account and try again, but I wanted to first describe what I did and ask for help while it was still fresh in my mind.

All suggestions as to what's wrong and what I should do would be greatly appreciated.

I deleted the zero-balance Schwab account and tried again. Everything went the same was but this time, I got the choice of "Link to Existing Account" (preselected) for the account I deleted. The other two accounts, those with the incorrect nicknames, still said "Don't add to Quicken." I let it go ahead with the hope that at least the one account would work.

I waited fifteen minutes. For Quicken, Task Manager said 0% CPU,

130.0 MB CPU, and 0 MB/s Disk, and none of those ever changed, so I shut down Quicken again.

I then restarted Quicken and noticed that in the account list that account now had Charles Schwab & Co, Inc, under Financial Institution, so I tried running an OSU for just that account. It waited forever there too, so I shut down Quicken again.

I now see that the two TD Ameritrade accounts with the incorrect nicknames have more than incorrect nicknames. They also have incorrect financial intuitions, so perhaps that's what's screwing everything up. I'll see if I can figure out how to change them.

Good thing you mentioned it because that is definitely related to your problem.

You can NOT rely on Quicken to correctly match the accounts found in the Add Account process.

When you see an incorrect "Nickname" for a downloaded account, that's a sure sign that Quicken matched the downloaded account to the wrong existing Quicken account.

One way or the other, you need to get back to the place you were when you initiated the first Add Account process for Schwab.

The simplest way would be to restore a backup from just before that event. Alternatively, you'd probably have to deactivate, at least the incorrectly linked Schwab accounts ... and perhaps all the Schwab accounts.

Then initiate the Add Account process again and check each "Link" that Quicken offers to insure the link is to the correct existing Quicken account.

I forgot to mention: I think it best to refrain from activating new accounts that are transfers from another brokerage until "Transferring" the Quicken holdings from the old Brokerage to the new Brokerage - using the "Shares transferred between accounts" pseudo-transaction.

Then when you activate the new Brokerage accounts, plan to ignore/delete any transactions downloaded by the new Broker that attempt to establish your new holdings: those transactions will almost certainly NOT contain the correct cost basis for your holdings - while the "Shares transferred between accounts" transaction will preserve each lot from the old brokerage in the new brokerage ... with the correct cost basis.

I said that wrong. It's not the TD Ameritrade accounts that have incorrect financial institutions, it's the two accounts with the incorrect nicknames that now have Charles Schwab & Co, Inc, as their Financial Institution.

I haven't figured out to change them. Is it possible? How?

I also tried to add my wife's Schwab IRA account and link it to Existing Account. That failed in the same way.

This is extremely frustrating. I don't know what to do. I'm not even sure I can remember everything I've tried.

As I said in another message I just sent, "I said that wrong. It's not the TD Ameritrade accounts that have incorrect financial institutions, it's the two accounts with the incorrect nicknames that now have Charles Schwab & Co, Inc, as their Financial Institution."

So is that related to the problem? How can I fix it?

I guess I could do that, but I'm reluctant to perhaps lose any transactions since the backup.

I now have one account that has Schwab as its financial institution, although it's still called TD Ameritrade. The other three accounts are still TD Ameritrade, both with regard to name and financial institution. Should I deactivate all four? Unless you think otherwise, that seems safer than restoring a backup.

Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding that. Are you saying I should do that instead of what you said in your earlier message (restoring a backup or deactivating)? If so, can you be more specific about exactly how I should do what you suggest.

That's what I understood you to say.

Again: If possible, restore a backup from before you started this process.

If not, deactivate the accounts that are incorrectly matched, initiate the Add Account process again, and make sure the downloaded accounts are Linked to the correct Quicken accounts. [That means when you see the dialog box with all the Schwab accounts that Quicken discovered, make sure you check to see that the "Action" Dropdown says "Link to existing" and that the Nickname column has the same name as the name of the Quicken Schwab account you want to link to. If the Nickname is not correct, open the Action > Link to ... and choose the correct Quicken account.

It's not "instead of": it's a question of timing. Transfer the holdings to the new Quicken accounts before you do the first download to the new Quicken accounts - that download will happen at the conclusion of the Add Account process.

If you transfer your holdings in Quicken, before you activate the new Schwab accounts, it will likely be easier to deal with the transactions that Schwab is going to download during the Add Account process.

You might want to do a trial-run in a New (test) Quicken file.

Manually create one Quicken account for each Schwab account. Initiate the Add Account process for Schwab, making sure each downloaded Schwab account is Linked to the correct existing Quicken account.

At the conclusion of that process, take note of the transactions Schwab downloads. Some (perhaps all) of those transactions will represent the transfer of your holdings from your previous brokerage to Schwab.

You will not want those transactions when you do the download to your regular file. Instead you will want the transactions that Quicken will create when you use the Quicken "Transfer shares between accounts" pseudo-transaction.

Doing the test run should give you a good idea what to expect when you do the Add Account for real.

You should be able to see just which Schwab transactions you will want to delete when you do the Add Account process in your regular file - because your Quicken "Shares transferred between accounts" pseudo-transaction will transfer your holdings more accurately/completely than the transactions Schwab will download.

Thanks very much for this and your other two messages I just read. No time now, but I'll follow your suggestions tomorrow.

Now I can't do an OSU at all.

I thought I would do an OSU before doing anything. I tried. It completed one CC account then froze as it was trying to do the others.

I used Task Manager to end task and restarted Quicken, I asked whether it should install the update it had downloaded. I said yes and it did. Then I tried an OSU again. It froze again.

I tried deactivating a TD Ameritrade account. It froze on that too.

I opened the backup file it made before installing the update and tried again. It froze again.

I rebooted and tried an OSU again. It froze again.

I tried doing a backup. It resulted in the message "File not backed up."

For a reason unrelated to the TD Ameritrade/Schwab problem, I just tried adding a new account I just opened. It froze doing that too.

Thinking that perhaps nothing at all was working in Quicken, I just tried manually adding a transaction in an unrelated account. Fortunately that worked.

You may have some file corruption.

You could try Validate and Super Validate. [I believe Quicken automatically makes a backup when it does Validates, but you might want to make one yourself.]

As I said in my last paragraph above, I couldn't backup.

I tried Validate. It repaired several folders and removed several invalid transactions. I then retried backup, OSU, and add file. All failed in the same way as before.

I then tried Super Validate. I then retried backup, OSU, and add file. All failed in the same way as before.

What next? Am I completely out of luck? Is there anything else I can do or at least try?

You can always make a "backup" by simply using Windows Explorer to Copy your data file. I would do that now, putting the "backup" file in a safe place.

And if Quicken made a backup before doing its Validate(s), I would save that somewhere too.

Then I would use Help > Report a problem to notify Quicken. Include your data file and all your log files. Include a simple description of the problem. Do not expect, so do not wait for, an answer.

The last resort I can think of is to Restore the most recent backup from a QDF file that did not experience the problem.

Yes, of course. Why didn't I think of that myself?

I will.

I didn't want to do that, but I suppose it's the only remaining alternative, so I guess I'll have to. I'll do it in a little while.

Thanks again.

You can try to discover whether there is some corruption in the backup file you intend to restore ... before you actually overwrite your existing file.

Copy the backup you want to restore to a separate folder with no other files in it. Then rename that file and remove the "-backup" from its file extension. You can then just open (not restore) the file in Quicken. Do a Validate and a SuperValidate, noting (and possibly saving) each log file that Validate creates. See if there is any hint of some corruption that might be present.

You can also test your new Schwab accounts in that file (I would do that after the Validates) to see how things go. If there are problems, you can try to fix, or workaround, them ... or try the same thing with an earlier backup.

Tonight (09-06-23) @ 20:08 CDT time I did a One Step Update. I have checking, savings and investment accounts at Schwab - plus accounts with multiple other financial institutions, including BofA, Discover, Chase, American Express, Vanguard and Fidelity.

My OSU hung and I finally used Task Manager to kill Quicken.

The Schwab updates did not complete; the others did - it appears the Schwab update was what was preventing the OSU from completing.

I had done an OSU earlier today (at around 13:00 CDT) and everything seemed to work ok. The OSU completed on its own; the accounts that had activity available for download (including Schwab) received their expected transactions.

So when I responded in this discussion earlier today, it did not dawn on me that there could be a problem with Schwab. But after my experience tonight, I'm thinking there is something going on with Schwab.

[Note: I have had no "conversions" of non-Schwab accounts to Schwab accounts (nor created ANY "new Schwab accounts) for many months, so today's issue does not appear to be related to transferring holdings to Schwab. Or creating ANY new Schwab accounts for downloading.]

Sometimes when OSU hangs, and Quicken must be aborted; it's just one financial institution that is causing the problem. In those instances, it is may be possible to use "Update Now" (or "Update Transactions") to update the non-problem financial institutions individually - while waiting for the problem financial institution's problem to get fixed.

I don't know whether that will help in your situation, but it may be worth a try.

[My everyday Quicken release is R50.16 which is the release I referenced for all my earlier posts in this discussion. Tonight I also tested an OSU with R51.12; and it did not exhibit the same problem. My OSU completed without a hitch. Since I don't try to keep my test file up to date, so I can't be certain that everything downloaded - but the fact that Quicken did not hang is interesting to me.]

Sorry I'm not up to digging any further into this at the moment. You may want to monitor the Quicken Community (as I will) to see if there are any others having the problem, and to see whether there is any acknowledgement from Quicken.