Why is my Monero transaction not appearing in wallet?

Question

I have transferred Monero from an exchangeto my windows desktop wallet. I was having trouble receiving it and the synchronizations was stuck so i downloaded the new version. It seems to have synched now. ("just says connected") but no coins received. I put the transaction id given by the exchange into the block explorer and have checked the receiving address on my wallet. The transaction id confirms that it has been included in a block over 24 hours ago. why is the transaction not appearing in my wallet? Is there a way to check if my wallet is synced properly and that i do in fact have the most recent version installed (i think i do). please advise as to the next course of action I should take.

UPDATE: I have realised that the wallet keeps alternating from saying "connected" (to my mind indicating that the blockchain is up-to-date) and actually going into synching. So i guess if i leave it for long enough it will eventually sync. However, this would indicate that every time i want to do a transaction i will have to wait several days for the coind to show up. This makes me think that something is not right with maybe the configuration fo my wallet or some other problem. Please could somebody shed some light on this situation for me. When i checked on the wallet it has gobe from 35000 blocks remaining a few hours ago to something like 25000. Is this behaviour normal for a monero wallet? it hasnt been that long since i opened it so i dont know why it is so far behind. Is there a quicker way to download the blockchain apart from waiting for days and days to make one transation?

Answer 1

The wallet needs to synchronize with blockchain. In Monero, where transactions are encrypted, it means the wallet must download all the data and try to decrypt every single transaction in order to check if it received any funds.

Every wallet remembers the blockchain height at which it was synchronized last time, and each time you open it, all following blocks are downloaded. You may choose between syncing often or waiting a long time when you sync seldom.

I'll also answer two questions that may arise:

• When creating a new wallet, the code estimates creation time measured in block numbers that should have been mined until that moment (a block is being mined every ~2 minutes). Then it just requests those above the level.
• When a wallet is being restored from keys or mnemonic, it must download, scan and discard entire blockchain. In such situation it's worth considering to download the blockchain to permanent storage and run full node.

Answer 2

I had the same problem, but the root cause of mine was much simpler: I had multiple accounts. Here's how I fixed it

1. I clicked the "close this wallet and return to the main menu" button on Monero GUI (right arrow button at the top left hand corner)
2. Click Open a wallet from file
3. Select the correct wallet or just brute force go through each
4. Enter password
5. Click "Export view key" on device (I had a Ledger Nano X)
6. If it complains about device mismatch (it will show the address of the wallet you are trying to open and the one your Device is trying to open) just go to "Settings>Select Account>[Number]" on the ledger and cycle through to other accounts until you find the right one
7. PROFIT!