Attachments and links when moving to a new Mac

Geo H

I plan on moving my Quicken for Mac to a new computer. I have attached many documents to transactions. Are these links part of my daily backups or will I have to reestablish all new links? I am never sure if the documents I attach are duplicated inside Quicken or it is just a link to the existing file I select when I add the attachment. Can you explain the actual process?

jacobs

What version of Quicken Mac are you using?

But to answer your question, yes, your attached files -- the actual files, not links -- are part of your data file, and will move when you move the data file. A Quicken data file is actually a specific type of Mac file called a "package", which puts a wrapper around a collection of files and folders and allows the macOS to show it and treat it as if it was a single file.

So inside your Quicken data file, there are actually several folders, and one file called "data" which is the actual database of your Quicken data. One of the folders inside the data file package is called "attachments", and within that folder is where Quicken creates folders for each attachment and stores the actual attachments. You can see this if you Control-click on your data file and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Here's mine from a sample data file where I just added two attachments:



(Note: peek inside the data file if you want, but do not move, delete, or edit any filenames, or you might lock yourself out of accessing your data.)