How do I clear the memory of imported transactions?

Trapper:

John is the go-to guy for these kinds of issues. My input would be to offer that I download my 401(k) from Schwab using Direct Connect, and have not seen a *.qfx file associated with my downloads. There was one time when I did have problems with one of my files, and I took the Draconian measure of deleting my *.qel file, NOT RECOMMENDED! John should be able to give you more helpful advice.

Bob

Is there a way to tell Quicken to import them again? Even though I deleted them, Quicken still acts like they have already been imported, so now the data is missing.

Any way to get around this and treat the entries in the .qfx file as new?

Thanks for any help, Trapper

Here is my understanding.

Quicken is designed to "remember" which transactions you have downloaded before; if you delete downloaded transactions, you should only do so if you don't want to download them again. Imagine the uproar from folks who intended to permanently delete downloaded transactions, if those deleted downloaded transactions kept appearing in subsequent downloads.

I believe Quicken remembers which transasactions were downloaded by specific Quicken account. So, for example, you should be able to create a new Quicken account (in the same Quicken file) and re-download (available) transactions, that had been deleted, to that new Quicken account. And if the account in question was a non-investment account for a newer version of Quicken (post Q2004, I believe), that might be a good strategy since, in Quicken, you can now select multiple non-investment account transactions and cut/copy/past or move them to another non-investment account.

But you can only cut/copy/paste one transaction at a time in investment accounts, so the above approach may not be as inviting.

To overcome the cut/copy/paste limitations for investment accounts, you could still create a new (temporary) investment account, import the previously downloaded transactions to the new investment account, export those transactions to a QIF file, then import that QIF file to the regular investment account, then delete the temporary account. Importing qif files into Quicken versions later than Q2004 requires a bit of fiddling with the QIF file and a slightly different import procedure.

Alternatively: If you have a qfx file of the transactions you deleted, and (I believe) the qfx file came from a Web Connect download, I think there is a workaround for getting Quicken to import the previously downloaded transactions directly from the qfx file.

The way Quicken keeps track of which transactions have been downloaded is by a unique transaction id created by the financial institution. To get Quicken to import transactions that were previously imported, you can modify that transaction id (in the qfx file) to be something that is guaranteed to be unique (not only unique to previous downloads, but unique for all future downloads (from that fi).

The qfx file is basically HTML and it can be modified in a word processor. The field you want to modify will have a tag of , I believe. While that field can be as long as 255 characters, I think it is recommended that it not exceed 32 characters.

Your task would be to find a way to modify the contents of the field to make it unique for that fi/account for all time. I think this should not be too difficult to do. If you check the for some of the transactions in the qfx file, you should get an idea of the method the fi uses to create the FITID (often it is some combination of date/time and possibly some other info). You may be able to just affix a one, or two, character suffix to the existing FITID to accomplish the goal.

Thanks John for the extrememly well detailed options! I think I will try creating a new account, exporting the data, importing it into the account up to the point where the data was bad, and then adding the .QFX data from Schwab. That sounds like it should do the trick!

Thanks again for the effort and explanation!

Cheers, Trapper