Files Not Saving Properly
I have been converting from Quicken to Money dance for the past two - three weeks. As i have gained more understanding from Money dance I have to say my high hopes for MD are quickly waning. While Quicken has many issues , its data overall is reliable. I can not say the same for MD. I save a file after a extensive session of updating only to find when I reopen the file all the updates are missing. When I do my end of month updating Quicken takes about 15- 20 minutes,MD take 2 -3hoursand then loses the data. I have found MD to be an exhausting manual process for downloading and updating files. For instance, If I download a brokerage dividend payment, in Quicken,it loads it to the brokerage account and transfers it to the money market account. In MD you download, then must manually tell it to transfer the payment, manually change the account to transfer the money ,save it then go back one more time to accept the transaction. This is only one example and there are many more. I had hope for a full featured personal finance program, I'm afraid MD is falling far short especially on is data integrity.
Comments are currently closed for this discussion. You can start a new one.
Keyboard shortcuts
Generic
| ? | Show this help |
|---|---|
| ESC | Blurs the current field |
Comment Form
| r | Focus the comment reply box |
|---|---|
| ^ + ↩ | Submit the comment |
You can use Command ⌘ instead of Control ^ on Mac
1 Posted by Ben Spencer on 02 Oct, 2010 06:48 PM
I am sorry Moneydance is not meeting your expectations. We have not had report of the data file failing to save from other users. Are you getting an error message when you try to save your file? Can you select Help->Console Window and then select File->Save. If you get an error output could you post it to this discussion.
There is an option under File->Preferences->General called "Save on Every Quit". I recommend enabling this option if you have not already done so.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
2 Posted by davier12 on 02 Oct, 2010 09:05 PM
Ben
I have enabled "Save on Quit Again" that's part of the problem, I had
previously enabled it and when I opened the file obviously the changes were
lost. I also have auto save enabled and I am wondering if thisis causing
some of the problem.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Spencer"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 2:50 PM
Subject: Re: Files Not Saving Properly [Problems]
3 Posted by Ben Spencer on 03 Oct, 2010 02:17 PM
Was there any pattern to the los of data? For example had you lost all transactions after a certain date?
Moneydance goes to some lengths to ensure that a harddisk or program crash will not cause loss of data. When a save is initiated the save is made to a tempoary file and then a rename of the temporary file is made to replace the origional. The rename is an atomic or close to atomic operation. If a crash happened during a save you will not get a corrupt of partial file.
Is it possible that you had recently manually changed the location of your data file? If you moved your primary data file and then ran the Moneydance program, Moneydance would not know where it is and may have opened an old auto save file if it found one.
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
4 Posted by davier12 on 07 Oct, 2010 02:55 PM
Ben
I just wanted to let you know it has happened again. After the message I
sent you on 10/3 and your reply, I insured my setting were "save on exit"
and "auto save on". I updated my accounts for the second time. Today I got
my month end statements and I was going to reconcile them. When I got to the
online download, all the information I had previously input as to account
number, login and password was gone. For the third time I updated the
required information. I really have no confidence that this program has ANY
data integrity. I wish I could see something to over come that because I
would really like to quit Quicken. Thankfully I have been running parallel
systems and Quicken data is fine.
Another thing that is totally frustrating is when I initially imported
the Quicken file and reconciled each account balance and transaction, I
found that the initial download of online transaction did not give me the
option to match the transactions. I therefore had to delete the imported
transaction and accept the downloaded transaction. If I did not do this,
each time I did a download it would download the transaction again. This is
one of the things that takes so long to settle the month end accounts,
especially when the program sporadically loses the information.
Dave Neel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Spencer"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2010 10:19 AM
Subject: Re: Files Not Saving Properly [Problems]
5 Posted by Noname on 07 Oct, 2010 04:22 PM
In order to save account logons and passwords you need to encrypt your file (File > Encryption) and check the Save Online Passwords box. See Chapter 13 of User Guide (Help > Moneydance Users Guide)
6 Posted by davier12 on 07 Oct, 2010 04:28 PM
They are and were encrypted.
----- Original Message -----
From: "jbnyt"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2010 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: Files Not Saving Properly [Problems]
7 Posted by Jessica Little on 07 Oct, 2010 07:53 PM
Dave,
Could you let us know where you are saving your .md files and backup files? You can search your hard drive for them. It sounds like you may be running into some kind of permissions error on your backup location. This is difficult to diagnosis sometimes, so knowing the file location will help.
Also, when you first import a file from Quicken, the old transaction don't have any transaction ID. Therefore, when you do a download from your ban\k (either direct connect or importing an OFX file), Moneydance will be unable to suggest matches for the duplicate transactions. This is why you had to delete the duplicates and accept the downloaded transactions. However, this should only happen once, since now you've downloaded those transactions and shouldn't have any duplicates in the future. If it happens again, please let us know.
Jessica Little
Moneydance Support
8 Posted by davier12 on 08 Oct, 2010 01:16 AM
You are so good and responsive. I store my files on an external harddrive.
When I do a backup they are in the same folder as the active file, but I
name them with a date extension, so I know I am not confusing them. The path
is G:\MoneyDance\Neel\filename.md.
I just moved all the backup files to a separate folder called backup,
however I do not think that is what is causing the problem, but I don't know
what is. It's just frustrating to do all that work only to have it
disappear.
Thanks for your effort.
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jessica Little"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2010 3:55 PM
Subject: Re: Files Not Saving Properly [Problems]
9 Posted by Jessica Little on 08 Oct, 2010 06:28 PM
Hi Dave,
Sometimes there are issues on Windows with external hard drives. it would be good to rule out if that is the problem. Could you try moving your Moneydance folder on to your internal hard drive and see if that makes the problem go away? If it does, then we'll know that there is something about your external drive or network that is causing the problem.
Jessica Little
Moneydance Support
10 Posted by davier12 on 08 Oct, 2010 08:11 PM
Jessica
I will try that to see if anything changes, however I keep my Quicken
files there as well and have never had a problem with them.
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jessica Little"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 2:31 PM
Subject: Re: Files Not Saving Properly [Problems]
11 Posted by Ben Spencer on 16 Nov, 2010 05:02 PM
Hi Dave
I just read in your other post:
"I noticed something this am when I was running my Bi monthly updates. When I do a file backup using save as the file path does not return to the
primary after saving the file, it remains on the save as path. This causes
the save when I exit to go to the backup folder/file rather than the primary
path on my harddrive. I think a popup reminding to change the path or a pre
assigned backup command would prevent this problem. This maybe contributing
to the missing data, however it would not address why it dropped the
download info."
I think this could very well be the cause of the problem. For example if you open a file called A.md and you add some transactions and then select File->Save As... and you save as B.md. B.md will include the changes but A.md will not. If you then went back to A.md you would not see the changes you made because you did not save the changes to A.md.
I do not recommend selecting File->Save As... as a way of creating backups of your data file. This is not the intended function of Save As... Moneydance will always open the last opened file when you run it so if you do a File->Save As... you will open the newly created file when you next run Moneydance.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
12 Posted by davier12 on 16 Nov, 2010 06:22 PM
I understand. How do you propose I create my bi monthly backup?
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Spencer"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:02 PM
Subject: Re: Files Not Saving Properly [Problems]
13 Posted by Ben Spencer on 16 Nov, 2010 06:50 PM
I would make the backup using your Operating Systems file browser. Browse to the main .md data file, copy the file and rename the copy with the date.
Ben Spencer
14 Posted by davier12 on 25 Nov, 2010 03:40 PM
Show this as resolved.
Thanks
dave
System closed this discussion on 01 Jul, 2016 02:10 PM.