Community Discussion: validation finds an account that doesn't exist

Community Discussion: validation finds an account that doesn't exist

Found at:

The original poster's opening statement reads:

"I was dealing with very slow performance and followed some advice to "validate" the file (>>FILE >>Validate and Repair/validate) and each time it was run it comes up with a odd message. It claims "Quicken repaired ACCT_131b1 account. No action required."

The account in question almost certainly DOES exist in the user's file - it is just "hidden" in a way that denies normal access.

The real question should be whether the user can access the account to deal with its contents, if necessary; and whether the user can delete the account when it it no longer needed.

[There used to be a Quicken FAQ on dealing with temporary accounts (accounts whose name began with "ACCT_"), but that FAQ has sadly been deleted.]

I don't recall the details of that deleted FAQ, but I do know that there is a way to "open" (at least some) of the accounts that Quicken hides from users. To do that:

- create a dummy transaction in an existing Quicken account, a transaction that is a "transfer" to the hidden account. That means: put the hidden account name ("ACCT_131b1" in this instance) in square brackets in the dummy transaction Category field.

- right-click the newly created dummy transaction and select "Go to matching transfer".

Once the Quicken hidden account is open, it should be possible to examine its transactions and determine whether they are valid; and if they are valid, how to deal with them (move them to the "correct", non-hidden, account, for example). When the transactions in the Quicken hidden account have been dealt with, the user should try opening the Account Actions (gear-wheel) icon and selecting "Edit Account Details", At the foot of the Edit Account Details > General tab, the user should click the "Delete Account" button.

There are a couple of other Community discussions on the subject that may be of some interest. Community Discussion: Quicken has created temp accounts ACCT_4070 ACCT_4071 etc. Found at:

Community Discussion: Super Validate finds same errors every day Found at:

[There are some excellent comments by Members, markus1957, Chris_QPW and Arctic Hare, in the second discussion.] [Community Discussion last updated: Nov 7, 2022 @ 9:33AM. At that time, the original poster believed the problem may have been fixed by doing a super-Validate.]