I have a huge problem and maybe someone out there can help me out. Have a single Quicken file, 50Mb size, about 70 accounts (50 historical, 20 active). File got corrupted, and this time I cant solve it either through Validate or Supervalidate.
THe problem is as follows :
1) I enter a new transaction, by inputting: Date, Payee, Payment, Memo, Category/Class.
2) Press ENTER
3) The transaction does not register either Payee or Memo, these fields show as N/A, everything else is fine.
This, as you can imagine, is a big problem as I can't really WORK in my file. I canned Intuit and they basically told me: (1) File too big, (2) Too many accounts (3) Start a new file and forget about the old one
There are almost too many possibilities to address in a single reply ... and maybe no simple answers ... and maybe no good answers.
Despite the fact that you have claimed one of the largest file sizes I remember reading about, I doubt that file size, per se, is the problem. But larger files imply more elements that do have limitations in Quicken (though I do not know, or remember, what the exact limitations are): elements such as payees, memorized transactions, scheduled transactions, securities, etc.
Shooting from the hip: do you have Quicken automatically memorizing new transactions (payees)? If so, turn it off. Also check the size of your Memorized Transaction List: I think I once read that there was a limit of 2000 memorized transactions; if you are anywhere near that number, get rid of some.
You can look for other such over-accumulations; perhaps you have too many of something else.
If nothing else bears fruit, consider doing a Quicken "copy" of your file (which may eliminate some logically, but not physically, deleted data). Try validating/super-validating that copy.
Consider creating a Quicken copy of your data, that eliminates some of the oldest data (a choice I personally dislike).
Consider exporting your data to a QIF file; creating a new Quicken data fileset; and importing the QIF file to the new Quicken data fileset. (Check the faq at the MSN Quicken Users Group for very useful information about this process ... and if you have Q2005 or later, you can still benefit from the faq, but you will have to use the "all accounts" approach to import qif files. You can post back with any questions about that, or look for other posts here, or at the Intuit Quicken forums, on the subject).
First, copy your backup folder to a safe place. Every time you run Quicken, it will roll those backup numbers. You don't want your good backup rolling off the end and getting lost in your recovery attempts.
Second, check those backups. Is one of them good? If so, use that to create a clean database. Do not just assume that everything is fine and start using it. There may be corruption in the data that just hasn't shown itself yet (that was my situation last week).
Third, check the help system. Enter "recover corruption" and you will be given step-by-step how to recover. (which is what I ended up doing)
In my case, I had 11 accounts, and 5 of them were corrupted. Quicken crashed whenever trying to fix them. I ended up having to export each account separately. 6 were good to go upon importing. For the 5 bad ones, I had to step back through the backups until I found one that was pristine and would export cleanly.
After creating a valid QIF export for each account, I created a new file, then imported each account. I had to manually re-enter the transactions for the accounts that needed an older backup, but am back in business after several hours of tedium.
My earliest record in my Quicken database was from June 1989. Been using Quicken since it was first released on the Mac.
My automatic backups are all corrupt, but I do backup all my data every week, my earliest complete non-corrupt quicken file is two months old.
How can you check if the experted account doesnt have any corruption? I've started to export all the accounts one by one, and are testing them independently.
I've also started to manually enter all my info again ( in the 2 month old backup)
There can never be any guarantees; you must accept that.
But you can, make a Quicken "copy" of your current data, then you can Validate/super-Validate that copy. If no problems are found, just go on your merry way.
You're luckier than I was. I hit this last month, and discovered the latest non-corrupt file was from April 2004...!
I don't think you can with any absolute guarantee. However, here is what I did:
1) Export every account to QIF
2) Import each account to a separate file.
3) Check each file (in my case, I found that corrupted accounts were missing large amounts of data, and were easy to check)
4) Test each file (in my case, I found that if I did a 'download quotes' the result was a disaster for the corrupted accounts -- easy to spot).
When I had a file that looked good for each account, I then used the QIF source for those and imported them all into a single file (which is the way I preferred to work long term)
I then did 'save copy' and switched to that copy as my primary. That was the one I did the manual updating of lost data into.
When done, I burned 3 CDs of all the final used files - the corrupt one, each QIF that was finally used, and the final file in which everything was back together. One of those is on my bookshelf, 1 in my home data safe, and 1 in my bank deposit box.
At the very least, I don't think I will have to go back past this date to recover for the next decade or so. :-)
Well... I finished the backup foa all the accounts independently, and made a copy of each with Quickens copy utility. Having every account independently I found that 12 of them were giving me trouble so I've been going further back with those, I still haven't found a non corrupt for 3 of them, and are almost 6 months back now.
At least I have most of it working.
Intuit should provide service or a GOOD utility to check every single aspect of coruption in a file... At some point I thought of shifting to Money, but Quicken is still unbeatable software wise. AH!!!!
Well... Thank you all for your input, I am on my way to finish recovering ALMOST all my data. It won't be long for me to finish.
I suppose you trying Active@ undelete tool to restore the file. That can really help, as it worked for me in a simmilar situation. That could really be your chance.
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