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?