Only a long time Quicken user will empathize with the trauma of having your Quicken data file fail to open. It happened to me this weekend, and after a couple days of experiments, I finally solved the problem. I’m posting this here on the blog because my Google searches on the topic turned up *nothing*, and the Intuit boards were useless on this topic.
First, background:
- I’m using Quicken 2007 for the Mac, updated with the R2 updater and the R3 Certificate updater. This is the most recent version.
- I’ve used Quicken since 1994 to keep track of my expenses and investments. That’s right, this file has 15 years of meticulous data in it.
- Quicken for the Mac users at some level are masochists. Circa-2000, Intuit decided that the Mac market wasn’t worth supporting, and effectively ended support for the product. As Steve Jobs brought the Mac back, Intuit brought back support… but very little enhancement to the product. Quicken 2007 is largely the same as the Quicken 1999 product, except far more rickety and long in the tooth.
OK, so here’s the story:
- About 3-5 weeks ago, when downloading stock quotes, I got a very strange error. It said something like “Unable to create INTC. Security already exists.” (Of course it exists, I’ve been tracking INTC for more than 10 years…)
- About 2 weeks ago, I quit and relaunched Quicken for some reason (my machine tends to stay up for weeks at a time.) On relaunch, all of my “manually entered” stock quotes were gone. After a brief panic, I restored a file from Time Machine from a week prior, and all was forgotten.
- Periodically, I received that error when downloading stock quotes.
- On Friday, I restarted Quicken and got a spinning beach ball. I thought it hung, so I force quit it, and restarted. Spinning beach ball.
- No worries, right? I have multiple backups. I use Time Machine to get an older file. I launch. Spinning beach ball.
- Uh oh. Mild panic. I tweet. No one tweets back.
- I go to the “Quicken Backup Folder”, which is created automatically in your Documents folder. I select several of the backups, duplicate them, and try to launch them.
- Good news, the file from November 12 actually works, but all security prices are missing.
- Bad news, it’s missing two weeks of data! A lot of manual re-entry of the last two weeks. Not too bad though.
- On Saturday, I quit Quicken and relaunch as part of a reboot. Spinning beach ball.
- Uh oh. Time Machine backups don’t work. I tried five of them from the last three weeks.
- Double Uh Oh. The only file that seems to work is that one from November 12. But it gives me an error “Unable to save security”. It works, but is missing all security prices. But it’s missing the two weeks of transactions.
- A bit of panic here. I search Intuit boards. No luck. I post a question anyway, even though the community on the boards gives me no confidence of ability to help or desire to do so.
- I delete Quicken 2007 and all preference files, and try to reinstall + updaters. No luck.
- Tweets return nothing, except strange semi-taunts like, “I hate Quicken too.”
- Finally, I realize I may have to create a new file, then export/import all the transactions to create a new clean file. Creating the file works. Trying to export QIF and reimport into the new file leaves totally bizarre numbers and transactions. Seriously, has QIF export ever worked in the past two decades? Will it ever work?
- Desperation. I start seriously contemplating doing all my finances in Mint… except Mint doesn’t actually support managing accounts without online access that well. I like Mint, but I use it differently than Quicken…
- Hail Mary. The Quicken file isn’t really a file, it’s a Mac OS Package. It’s a fancy name for a directory of files that is tagged to act like a single file for the Finder. Looking inside, I find a data file for “Quotes” and a directory for “Quotes Details”. I delete both.
- Salvation. I launch Quicken. No beach ball. Works beautifully. All stock quotes are gone, but a quick click to download quotes fixes that. I manually re-enter the few securities that don’t have ticker symbols. Everything is wonderful again.
So, just to capture some trouble-shooting for you, here is what I saw:
- Launching Quicken with the corrupted file led to a spinning beach ball for over 30 minutes
- When it did finally load, it gave me an error “Unable to open file”
- There was a history of getting errors related to the downloaded stock quotes for securities
Solution was:
- Make a duplicate of your Quicken file (always, always have a clean backup)
- Right-click (or control-click) on the Quicken file.
- Select “Show Package Contents…” from the Finder.
- Double-Click on the “Contents Folder”
- Select the “Quotes” file and the “Quotes Details” folder
- Drag them to the trash, and empty trash
- Relaunch Quicken with the file
Thus, I am still a Quicken user, at least for a little while longer. Intuit, if you are reading, please get Quicken 2010 (which has been promised for two years) out the door. And make sure the import from Quicken 2007 files is *flawless*.
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Filed under: Personal Finance, Software Tagged: | Intuit, Quicken
I hate Quicken, too.
Thanks for posting this. I felt your pain as I walked through your step by step update!
I’m hoping this post can serve as a bit of a talisman against losing my own close to 15 years of Quicken Data. Personally, I’m not holding my breath for Quicken 2010, but one can dream. Oh, and if it could possibly sync directly with Raymond James transactions (currently works only on PC) I would rethink the whole hatred thing.
Glad you got your file to work!
Thank you for this.
My only “problem” was I couldn’t update stock prices without throwing the whole portfolio out of whack … even deleting some odd dates didn’t help (that had worked once before). I had been inputting manually, and even that started to “blow up”.
I used the “Show Package Contents” information and am now able to download stock prices again!
I’m continuing to work on exporting my 15 years of data to spreadsheets … just to be safe … and am contemplating starting a new data file … and just using my current Quicken for “research”.
It’s unfortunate that Intuit abandoned Quicken and the Mac version … and it’s unfortunate that the “new” release of 2010 is so limited in how it handles stocks.
Over on macintouch.com, Michael Schmitt describes a technique for identifying whether your Quicken Quotes file is approaching the failure limit (http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/applications/topic4065.html#d04dec2009). WIth 12+ years of daily quotes and 45+ years of sparse quotes, I am now very interested in this issue, and pass this on to encourage others to check their data files.
Adam, you have my complete sympathy.
THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!
I only have complete data back to 2000. I kept getting “unable to save price” error messages. Quicken web site doesn’t even mention that error message. aAn email to Quicken gave a solution to trash Quicken Preferences then do a download of the last five years stock data.
Do you think trashing preferences would also some how trash the quotes lists hidden in the package???
I identified with every angst and emotion in your note. Thanks for a solution and more thanks for showing me “the package”
Can’t thank you enough.
thank you for this! as i read through your experience log, i mentally was saying “check, check, check” as you described exactly what I was experiencing. Thank you for this helpful play by play. I am back up and running again, and my heart rate has slowed to a somewhat normal rate. Thanks!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I also have data dating back to late 1999!
I have not been able to create Quick Reports by selecting a category for about a year now. In fact, every time I tried to access Categories, Quicken crashed. Rebuilding the data file by pressing Command + Option + B did not help. I’ve been walking on eggshells within Quicken for a year now.
This evening I trashed the Quotes file as you suggested (I do not have Quotes Detail folder). Now Quicken works like a charm.
I can’t thank you enough.
Thank you — same symptoms here, Quicken support recommended the QIF export/import that I knew would cost me hours of reconstruction of on-line accounts whereas I don’t care about past security prices. Thanks!
Your post was a life-saver! Spent hours trying to resolve this issue – like everyone else, very nervous about losing years of data. Thanks!
I found this today after fighting numerous errors over the last week. My financial history goes back to 1989!! Thought I’d lost the ability to track my investments at all with quicken, but now I’m up and running again. Thank you SOOOO much!
Your post appears to be the sole explanation of Quicken’s quirks on the web. Thanks you for shedding some light.
Like you, I use QfM 2007 – R3 since 1994, although I don’t download or save stock quotes. My problems have been similar: Spinning beach ball for no apparent reason, force quit and the message on reopening Quicken is “Unable to load file” not only for the data file but or all of the backups.
I too restored a file from Time Machine, opened it successfully, updated the missing information and saved it upon quitting, only to get the exact same “Unable to load file” message. I trashed all of the Quicken preferences, re-installed and updated Quicken…. and got the same result. I even purchased and installed Quicken Essentials, but was still unable to open, much less convert any of the files.
I followed your excellent description, trashed the “Quotes” folder (there were no “Quotes Details”), but to no avail. Does anyone out there have any other suggestions: It’s late tax filing time and I’m getting desperate.
By the way, I share one copy of Quicken among three users and it still works perfectly in two of the user accounts…
Fie on Intuit and Quicken; if I see another Intuit product in that Apple Store I think I’ll throw a fit.
Please excuse me for using your site as a trouble-shooting forum for Quicken for the Mac, but I thought it only fair to Quicken to share the following good news:
[I'm very happy to report that I received a quick and very timely response to Friday's e-mail to Quicken Customer Care. Although the procedure did not resolve the problem for the files located on my hard drive, it did restore a backup file brought in from Time Machine, which fortunately required only minimal manual restoration to bring it up to date, once Quicken recognized it and opened it. I've cycled the program through several open/close/manual backup cycles, each time restoring a little more information, and I 'm happy to say (knock on wood) that every thing works as expected, so far.]
“Thank you for contacting Quicken Customer Care.
In this case I would request you to follow the steps mentioned below. These steps should resolve the Unable to load file error.
• Hold down the Control key and select the file which you are not able to open and click on “Show Package Contents.”
• It will open up box and then open Contents folder. There you will see “Data File”.
• Again hold down the Control key and select Data File and click on Show Package Contents.
• And again it will open up the box and open Contents folder. Again you will see data file.
• Repeat the process till you do not see “Show Package Contents.”
• Once you do not see “Show Package Contents” holding down the Control key then try to open Quicken file and it will open your file.
If this does not work then kindly try to open your back up files.
Please open Documents folder and then look for Quicken Back up Folder or Quicken data file folder.
Double click on this folder and then you will see your back up files.
If the name of your original data file is Qdata.qdfm then name of back up files will be like 1qdata.qdfm, 2qdata.qdfm, 3qdata.qdfm and so on.
Kindly try to open the data file with prefix 1.
If it opens up fine then please continue with this data file.
If not then try other back up files.
If you have any back up on CD or flash drive then kindly try to restore that back up file.
You can also contact Chat Support, by visiting this URL – https://quicken.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/quicken.cfg/php/enduser/chat.php
Chat Support is available 24×7.
To speak to someone over the phone regarding this issue, you can setup a callback request using the following URL:
http://www.quickendirect.com/phone. Phone support is available from 5AM – 5PM PST, Mon-Fri.
Sincerely,
Ravinder Devgan
Quicken Customer Care”
I also thank you! I had data from 1998 and could not open it, but your solution worked!
Thank you!
Adam, Thanks so much for solving the problem that I had spent several hours on. A few clicks of the mouse!
Paul
Thanks so much. Finding this entry made my night.
I had a similar problem yesterday. Quicken would “quit unexpectedly” after updating security prices. I restored the file from a backup and exported the security prices. Since things like bonds don’t have ticker symbols, I added symbols like B0001, B0002, etc. for al of them before exporting the prices.
Once I had the price history in a qif file, I deleted “Quotes” and “Quotes Details” as suggested in this blog. After re-opening the file I tried to import the entire qif file with all the price history. That caused the file to “unexpectedly quit” again.
I opened the qif file in TextEdit and deleted all but the bond funds. With a clean copy of the Quicken file (without “Quotes” and Quotes Details”) I again imported the prices of just the funds with the temporary ticker symbols I added. That worked fine (and saved me from having to manually enter the price history for all the bonds, etc.). After that, I downloaded 5 years of security prices and I’m back in business.
Adam, thanks for your great blog!
Jay
Between you, google, and apple screen sharing, my father thinks I am a genius… Thank you!
Thanks. That totally worked for me as was getting “Cannot Open Quotes File” message.
[...] Right away, you should know something about me. I am a die-hard Quicken user. I’ve been using Quicken on the Mac since 1994, which happens to be the point in time where I decided that controlling my personal finances was fundamentally important. In fact, one of my most popular blog posts is about how to hack in and fix a rather arcane (but common) issue with Quicken 2007. [...]
Thanks so much for this post. I found it by searching for “quicken 2007 for mac file corruption” after several days of thinking it was related to my recent upgrade to Mac OS 10.6.8!
Thanks so much for your post. There is no way I would have figured this one out. Wish there was a better alternative for all my history back to 1990′s. Looks like the best plan is to save the file at year end and start a new program for 2012.
Add me to the list of Quicken for Mac 2007 users, as you, with data back to 1994, and experiencing the same problem with stock quotes. The problem showed up in my net worth report, my net worth had dropped by 50% today and I couldn’t blame today’s stock market.
I’m going to try copying the internal stock data files from a known working backup to see if I can quickly recover my old historical stock data. With fingers crossed…..
Worked!! Copied the Quote file and folder from a 10-day old known working backup and restored all historical stock quote day. Only have a 6-day gap (discounting two weekends).
Now to the question of what caused the problem. If it was a data-capacity limit problem then that will be a challenge. I’ll be doing a backup of the Quicken data file prior to each use until I have the confidence that this may have been a one-time occurrence (silly me).
Again many thanks for the solution to this problem!! My heart rate is almost back to normal.
I can’t thank you enough. I am running Q 2005; I have data going back to 1993. I suddenly began having problems very similar to those you describe. I tried many things and was becoming quite concerned. After several days and many crashes of Quicken, I found and applied your solution. As far as I can tell, it did the trick. Even though I could see on those occasions that I could get it to run briefly that the quotes were flaky, I don’t know that I would ever have stumbled on the cure on my own.
Any advice for someone who’s Quicken 2007 file keeps randomly dropping data. I had my books done through Oct 31 and when I opened in the other day, everything was gone back to 9/1. That’s the second time this has happened in three months. I had to recreate everything the first time. I was hoping there was an explanation. All backup files are identical to the main file. What’s happening???
Laura
Just a guess, but your file may be corrupted, and when you go back to your “backed up” version, you’re not going far enough back to “pre-date” the corruption.
Adam – I have Quicken 2006 version and my file will not load. I tried the removal of the quotes (even though I haven’t used that feature for years), and it will not open my file. I was able to open a version from Dec 14, but have lost three weeks of data entries (and I did a lot over the holidays for all my year end stuff.) Any ideas on how to take a look in the file to see what’s messed up? Thanks for the great blog.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a detective work. For me, the clue was that it crashed only when I tried to check quotes, and that the security prices were missing. That spoke to something wrong with the way it either stored or accessed quote data.
From past experience, I hate to say that losing 3 weeks of data is probably a blessing. Better to start from a working file, do the time, add the transactions back. Otherwise, you risk discovering 6 months from now that you based your efforts on a corrupted file.
I will say that Quicken 2006 automatically backs up the file every time you save. Are you sure you don’t have a more recent file in the Quicken Backups folder? What I would do is save those off, then one by one try to open them to see when the corruption happened. Time Machine is also a life saver in this regard.
Adam, Thank you so much for this. I was able to get things up and running after following your instructions and my quotes are working perfectly again.
Thank you!
Tom