missing online setup info - financial institutions

Can you give us your Quicken version and release, and the financial institution with which you're trying to connect? Perhaps someone here has a similar setup and can help.

First of all; you have not provided your Quicken version.

Second; are you saying you have a totally empty Participating Financial Institutions list?

Third; the message you saw generally means that the file "fidir.txt" is not found where Quicken is looking. (And clicking "ok" is, according to the text, just an acknowledgement of the message. The message also says - in my case - that you must go online or reinstall to resolve.

But, when I try a quick test - renaming fidir.txt, then running Q, and clicking OK to your message, then Online > Participating Financial Institutions - I then magically have a Participating Financial Institutions list. I can not find where the "new" list came from, because I can not find a "new" fidir.txt.

I do notice that their appears to be an index.ini file associated with the Participating Financial Institutions list which gives Quicken a server address which looks like it could be the source of a replacement FI List ... but that .ini file has not been accessed in over a month (I think) on my machine. So I still am not quite sure how Quicken replaces the list.

I think it used to be recommended that one do a One Step Update to get a new version of the list; I can't say for sure whether that will work or not.

3.) Assuming that your fi does offer downloads, the ideal way is to start from within Quicken; usually with the Participating Financial Institutions list or on the Summary screen for the account by clicking Setup Download button (working from memory on the exact name of that button). But if you are missing your fi list, you may be able to setup the account by going to the fi's web site and initiating the process from there. You can start at the Intuit site for Participating Financial Institutions (so you can get the name of the financial institution correct, and go from there to the fi's web site).

I'll leave the entire post below and just add a few clarifications - Running Quicken 2004 deluxe - updated from 2000 when that was retired I have several working mutual fund & brokerage accounts at - American Century, Fidelity, T. Rowe, Schwab, Vanguard ALL are working fine, download fine, and the QDF is ok.

It is just the missing Financial Institutions, which limits adding a new mutual fund, which is what I was attempting -

Phil -

which sub-dir is the file located ? as it seems there are several sub-folders, each with an index.ini - also - could you post the contents (if small) of the INI file

No fidir.txt on your pc anywhere?

My fidir.txt and the index.ini file for Q2004 are in this folder:

D:\Q2004\inet\common\localweb\banklist

Where "Q2004" is the folder containing the Q2004 application program and associated files.

The contents of the index.ini file are:

I think that because I do not use Q2004 on a regular basis, the LastUpdate date is fairly old. In my Q2002 index.ini file, the LastUpdate date is yesterday; presumably because I did a One Step Update yesterday.

I sort of surprised you can not initiate the account setup from the fi's web site; though I do think you should have a valid Participating Financial Institutions list.

Try this: create an empty file named fidir.txt in the appropriate folder. Modify your associated index.ini file so the LastUpdate date is blank. Then initiate a One Step Update.

(If you don't have Q2004, and you can't find the appropriate index.ini file, and you use Q2002 or Q2005, I have those as well, in case the contents are different for different versions ... as seems may be the case).

tnx for all the help - the FIDIR.TXT was not found at all, and then did a search on Google and found this old link on the Quicken site -

think I'll copy your INI text into my INI file and try again...

On Wed 30 Mar 2005 03:50:50p, Phil Schuman wrote in news:_aF2e.19776 $ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com:

Phil,

If you have any further problems, I can send you a copy of my FI list from Q2004D. I used to have the problem with my file disappearing also, you can probably find the problem by googling the group. I used to keep an extra copy with a different name for future occasions when it again disappeared. The problem was finally fixed -- I can't remember which, but this problem happened with either Q2004D or Q2000D for me on more than one occasion.

IIRC, It turned out that Quicken didn't like to download an updated version if you didn't have a current version to replace.. but I believe the msg I got much more obscure than the more descriptive message you got.

On Sat 02 Apr 2005 09:32:44p, Mike L wrote in news:Xns962CDB2B46F54ml@207.115.63.158:

..forgot to mention, I was able to easily resolve my problem (after finding the cause of my obscure message) cause I had a copy of Quicken also installed on my wife's laptop.. so just used a copy of her fi info to get me going again.

On Wed 30 Mar 2005 03:50:50p, Phil Schuman wrote in news:_aF2e.19776 $ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com:

Phil,

Another thought, you might want to make sure that you have not reinstalled Q2004D without updating it to the current maintenance level.