A couple weeks ago, we mentioned a problem some users were encountering with Inuit’s QuickBooks personal finance app for the Mac. Specifically, when the application contacted the server to look for an update, it also seemed to decide—just as a bonus—to delete all the files on your desktop. I know: convenient, right?
While Intuit has since issued a patch to correct this problem, it turns out that that the bug can still occur in some circumstances if, for example, you try to run QuickBooks while you’re on a public Wi-Fi network that requires you to register or login for access. Doh. The company plans to fix this problem shortly by providing another patch which entirely removes the auto-update feature.
While I’m glad Intuit’s staying on top of this problem, that’s probably little reassurance to those who’ve lost data as a result of this most heinous bug. It’s one of those cases of better never than late.
I managed to miss getting hit by this bug, but lesser known issue is that if you use the contact synching feature to sync your Quickbooks contacts with address book, it has been known to wipe out part or all of your Address Book file. This happened to me yesterday. I hadn't touched Address Book in a couple of days, but updated a contact in QB2007. Suddenly my email addresses weren't auto-filling. When I checked my address book, it was completely empty. Fortunately, I had a backup and was able to restore it without much fuss. I strongly suggest turning this feature off!