Quicken 2007- Invest. acct password fails

I probably can't answer your question, but perhaps some comments will trigger additional ideas from you or others.

Speaking generally, I don't think Quicken has any problem handling two Direct download accounts with different user-id's and passwords at a single financial institution. I have at least two fi's where I have two Direct download accounts each having its own user-id and password, and Quicken handles them with no difficulty.

Password editing rules are supplied to Intuit/Quicken by the financial institutions, and Quicken uses those rules to try to prevent invalid passwords as they are being created in Quicken ... so you won't have to try a download to discover you have incorrectly formatted your password. Perhaps Quicken's password rules for SB are out of date, or corrupted.

Have you had the first SB account setup for sometime, and are only now trying to setup the second account? Or are you trying to set them both up at the same time?

What happens if you create a New Quicken file and setup just the two SB accounts there?

Hi John,

The first SB account is of longstanding. It's only the second one which I am having problems with in the download vis a vis accepting the password. I all too aware of the capitalization issue. It isn't the problem, but I sure don't know what is. I have not tried creating these accounts in a new file. That should be an interesting experiment. I think I would do two trials, one with the accounts in the same order in the password vault, and if that still fails, reverse them so that the newer one is first. And maybe I should even try it with just the single new one defined.

Always appreciate your ideas.

jo

John,

I set up a new file with just the Smith Barney account that rejects the password. It still fails. It appears that there is a discrepancy between the number of characters allowed in a Quicken password and the number allowed on the actual site to distinguish my two accounts. Quicken is not letting me put in more than 8 characters and my password for this account is 11. I have entered more then 8 characters for other financial institutions [in the password vault] sucessfully. 8 is the number of characters in the password of the older SB account which works. It looks like Quicken is being told there is only a single password associated with the financial institution regardless of the two account #s. That's as close as I can track it thus far. I'm not sure I can rename my password on the second account to match the one on the first, even tho they have different user ids to gain access, but I guess I should try that. Any other ideas? jo

Quicken's limit for the total number of characters in a password is something like 31 characters ... and that was a couple of years ago; it may be longer now. The rules for passwords are supplied by the individual financial institutions to Intuit, who in turn, makes them downloadable to Quicken: each fi has their own set of rules. If the last rule that Intuit has for Smith Barney says that the password for Smith Barney can't exceed 8 characters, then that's all Quicken will allow. A financial institution can change their password rules and fail to notify Intuit.

Naturally, it is possible for Intuit to drop the ball and not pass the info along to Quicken. And it's also possible for Quicken to have a bug picking up password rules, though it seems to get them right most of the time. And it's also possible the password rules in a specific Quicken file could get corrupted.

In any event, if it was me, I'd start - not by trying to make the passwords for the two accounts the same; I start by changing the 11 character password to an 8 character password at Smith Barney. If that allows you to setup the account in Quicken, you can start downloading from both accounts.

Then you could take the issue up with Smith Barney, to make sure they have made Intuit aware that 11 character passwords are allowed. If Smith Barney is absolutely certain they notified Intuit, and that Intuit has had enough time to make the new rules available to Quicken, you could try submitting a bug report to Intuit about the problem. Actually you could submit the bug report anyway: it can't hurt. At one time, I believe that when such complaints were made in the Quicken Forums, there was at least one Intuit employee who attempted to follow up within Intuit to see that the new rules were available to Quicken.

Once Quicken and Smith Barney are in sync about the current password rules, you can change your SB passwords to whatever they allow, then change them in Quicken to match.

Guess I'll have to talk to Smith Barnery because when I changed the longer password to 8 characters, both accounts work as they should. At least you helped me figure it out. Thanks,

jo