Architecture of the QDF in the subscription version

Hovsep

The architecture of the QDF in the subscription version, is it fixed length or variable length records/fields

UKR

Sorry, that is and has always been confidential information. Quicken does not publish the database layout, to deter hackers.
The only thing about the QDF file format in Quicken for Windows available to the public is that it's a Zip-type file under the covers, combining several individual files and a folder structure for scanned attachments to accounts and transactions.

UKR

Sorry, that is and has always been confidential information. Quicken does not publish the database layout, to deter hackers.
The only thing about the QDF file format in Quicken for Windows available to the public is that it's a Zip-type file under the covers, combining several individual files and a folder structure for scanned attachments to accounts and transactions.

Ps56k2

As mentioned above - here is the zip-like file directory - of the QDF file -
merely takes the old orig separate files and combines them into a zip-like file.

Hovsep

Thank you. My quest was to reduce the size of the QDF file. I was thinking about consolidating categories, blanking out memo fields etc. but if the structure is a fixed length records for each transaction then my efforts are futile.
Thank you.

UKR

Hovsep said:

Thank you. My quest was to reduce the size of the QDF file. I was thinking about consolidating categories, blanking out memo fields etc. but if the structure is a fixed length records for each transaction then my efforts are futile.
Thank you.

@ps56k included a File Information view as his first image.
Can you give us the same for your data file, please?  Click Help in the Menu Bar. CTRL+click About Quicken to get this view, then attach it here.
This will tell us a little more about your file contents and we can tell you, what, if anything, needs to be done to slim down the file.

Hovsep

My attempts to copy and past are not successful so here is the info

Quicken 2015 Cash Manager R6
File information
size of QDF file -----------35943K
Accounts--------------------29
Categories------------------330
Memorized Payees------533
Securities--------------------16
Transactions----------------11942
System Resources
Available memory---------2097151K
Total memory---------------2097151K

much appreciated

UKR

Thanks for the File Information.

Your file is one of the smaller ones. Mine is about twice your size.

If you want to, you can do some trimming on the Categories to weed out unused categories and/or simplify the nesting depth of categories to subcategories to sub-sub, sub-sub-sub, etc. nested subcategories. The less levels there are, the faster some of the roll-up calculations in budget tables will perform.

To trim the list of Memorized Payees and keep it in shape please do this:

• In Edit / Preferences / Data Entry and Quickfill make sure you have a checkmark at
  "Remove memorized payees not used in [xx] months"
  and set [xx] to something like "18". Do not set it to zero. IMHO, you should set the number to 12 or higher for best results, so that once-a-year payees don't vanish.
• Restart Quicken for the change to take effect and housekeeping to clean up the Memorized Payee List.
• Check the File Information box again to see the reduced count.

If you want to eliminate "gas" within the data tables (e.g., deleted records) you can do this and make the file a little smaller still:

• Make a copy of your data file: Click File / File Operations / Copy.  Do not change any Copy Option settings. Save file under a new name in same folder as current Quicken data file.  (The Copy process appears to be performing a record-by-record copy of the data file and not just a simple binary image copy. This has been reported as recovering some otherwise not repairable files)
• When successful, close Quicken and ...
• Use Windows File Explorer to rename your current Quicken data file  (e.g., from QDATA.QDF to QDATAold.QDF). Rename the copied data (e.g. from QDATACpy.QDF to QDATA.QDF
• Start Quicken. It will load your copied and renamed (QDATA.QDF) file. Keep using it from now on.

Hovsep

Thank you for the instructions. I will review the categories and the memorized payees and take it from there....will post my findings.....By the way is the QDF in the subscription version the same as in Quicken 2015 or is it more efficient?

Regards

UKR

Hovsep said:

By the way is the QDF in the subscription version the same as in Quicken 2015 or is it more efficient?

Regards

Ignoring some minor changes to accommodate new or changed data fields, the data file format has been the same since 2010. Since the 2016 version there have been no data definition changes. So, for the first time since inception, a data file touched by versions 2016 thru today (2019) can be processed by either of these versions.
In older years this would not work because of the data definition changes. A data file in 2016 - 2019 format is not backward compatible to and cannot be be opened by Q 2015 or older.
A data file in any format, 2015 or older, cannot be processed by a prior Quicken version, again due to lack of backward compatibility (e.g. a 2014-formatted file cannot be opened by Q 2013 or any older version)