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.

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’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…..

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

Paul

[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”

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.

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.

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.

Adam, you have my complete sympathy.

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.

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!