Darn Placeholder Entry

Nov 12, 2006 2 Replies

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puzzled 19 years ago

Using Q2005D R6

After searching this group I see many others have issues with placeholder entries but I couldn't find my exact issue so here goes:

I have a brokerage account that I have been manually tracking for 2 years - decided I should get modern and start using the online update. So I first made sure that my quicken accounts matched my brokers then set up the online account. The broker uses first clearing as the provider and they offer the opportunity to go back from 1 day to 120 days so I selected 1 day figuring even if I got a placeholder it would be equal to the already entered data. I accessed the account and completed the initial download and, sure enough, I ended up with a placeholder entry for each stock in the exact amount quicken already shows. If I select the stock and click on it, all the transactions are there and they total the placeholder amount. Since I didn't get an opportunity to decline the placeholder, I highlighted it and deleted it which deleted the entire stock including the previous entries!

I really don't want to re input all of the historical transactions just to get the advantage of online updates so would appreciate any thoughts on how to get around this issue. Thanks in advance.

Tom

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John Pollard 19 years ago

The only time I know that downloaded transactions are not placed in the "Accept downloaded transactions into transaction list" window is on the first download to an account. And that is also the only time I know of when placeholders could be automatically added (and if you got placeholders when your share balances were correct, it sounds like your broker did not download any "holdings" data.).

But even during the first download, Quicken should pop up a dialog box titled, "How should Quicken handle these downloaded transactions", with two choices: "Review first" and "Accept all". If you elect to review first, no automatic placeholders will be created (placeholders may be "offered"); if you elect to "Accept all", that is when you can get automatic placeholders ... and the text alongside the option says that.

Following the first download, you should always find your transactions in the "Accept downloaded transactions into transaction list" window, and Quicken should never automatically generate any placeholders. (If your Quicken holdings differ from the holdings your broker downloads, you *will* get offers to enter placeholders ... though I believe you can even elect not to get those offers.)

I have never heard of anyone deleting a placeholder and having Quicken delete *any* other transactions at the same time; I can't help you on that one.

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Andrew 19 years ago

Tom - I realize this is probably too late, but just in case this might help others, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS make a backup of your Quicken file set before doing anything 'major' in terms of work like this - many times you'll find things just don't go right and you'll be glad you can start over or bail out altogether with the backup. If you look at the thread below "Classes vs groups vs categories", you'll see that I screwed around with that this weekend and am damn glad I had a backup as things got a little dicey for a while.

Saying all this, perhaps you have a recent backup that you can reuse - either you made it explicitly, or you can use one of the Q's automatic backups to recover and try again?

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