QB 2021 not updating after update prompt

Hi delerium,

Making sure your QuickBooks Desktop is up to date is a great way to ensure you have all the features and fixes that it includes. I'd be happy to go over how to update your QuickBooks Desktop and posting in the Canadian community.

Updating your program is a quick and painless process that you can set up to automatically do using the automatic update feature. The current update for QuickBooks Desktop 2021 would be Release 3 or R3 which included a few new updates and bug fixes which can be found here. In order to find out if your QuickBooks Desktop is currently updated to Release 3 you can press the F2 key or CTR+1. This will bring up your product information page which will tell you at the top which update it is on. If it's not the most up to date release you can manually download it from our website by going here and selecting the country, version and year. Once you hit search it'll bring up the product page with the version of 2021 you're using. From there you can select get the latest updates to download the newest release. You can also download the newest version of QuickBooks Desktop from there and reinstall using the new install wizard.

As for the community post there is a known issue when trying to access it from inside the product or through the ask the community link. Instead of bringing you to the proper place to post a question it sends you to our news page which posts cant be made on. Our technicians are aware of this and are working to get it resolved as fast as possible. A current work around is to go to the community site directly and go to: Community>QuickBooks Q & A>Other Questions. This will bring you to the correct page where you can make a post or find posts others have made that can help.

Hope this helps!

Hi Nick,

Downloading the update file and then running it does nothing. The update runs for about 5 seconds, appears to be finished, but does not actually install the update, because starting QB 2021 it prompts for the update again, answer yes, and nothing happens.

I appreciate you giving the manual download of the update a shot, delerium. Since that didn't work either, the next best step is to uninstall QuickBooks Desktop and then reinstall it. Once you've done that, you can use the steps Nick gave above to verify if the update was installed automatically in the process or try the manual update steps again. I've got an article here that can help with the install process in case you need it afterward: Install QuickBooks Desktop

If you're still having trouble with this, I recommend connecting with QuickBooks Desktop support outside of Community. That way, a member of our team can walk through this with you step by step, troubleshoot if necessary, and do what it takes to get you back on track. Check out the Intuit QuickBooks Desktop software support policies article to learn the options for getting in touch.

Don't hesitate to reach out to our team!

Hi Laura,

Reinstalling QuickBooks worked, but now there is another update and QB still will not update the proper way. Is this a common problem? I've been using QB for 20 years, and this is the first time updating is an issue, so something must be wrong with the update process.

Your link to software support policies is not a valid link, but if I have to pay for support, that is not an option for me - I already pay Intuit a monthly fee for QB, so support should be included.

Hello again delerium and thanks for providing an update on the status of this issue. The link to the support policies in @LauraAB's response has been updated so you should have no trouble checking it out now. In some instances support is free, so please review it and consider reaching out. It'll be the best way to get to the bottom of this issue, since I can't see exactly what you're seeing. Speaking with an agent means that you can do a screen share which will allow them to pinpoint the issue and provide you with the most accurate troubleshooting steps for the problem.

I have one other suggestion that might be worth trying, in case there's data damage done to your company file. It's possible that this is the cause of the problem, and once resolved, your updates may come through without issue. Check out our article on how to Fix data damage on your QuickBooks Desktop company file. My recommendation is still to reach out to support though, as they're equipped with the tools to get to the root of the problem in order to prevent it from occurring again. I wish you all the best!