Backups to Dropbox?

herbepa1

WHY does Quicken offer Dropbox backups when Quicken states "Quicken is not designed to be used over a network or shared drive (such as OneDrive or Google Drive). While you can back up data files to a network, you should not open or run Quicken on a network. Ensure Quicken is installed on your computer's hard drive." Do I then have to make two separate backups? One for my hard drive and one for Dropbox?

splasher

Quicken advises against having your Quicken DATA file (not the backups) on a network or cloud drive.

Putting your backups on a network, cloud or Dropbox is perfectly acceptable.

There is nothing inconsistent in this guidance.

jrich75

herbepa1 said:

Do I then have to make two separate backups? One for my hard drive and one for Dropbox?

In fact, when a backup is saved to Dropbox, it will be saved to the Dropbox folder on your hard drive and then uploaded to Dropbox cloud storage.  So you automatically have a local backup and a cloud backup.  There is no need to make separate backups.  Of course, it is a good idea to do both automatic backups as well as a manual backup prior to doing major updates.  Quicken does do an additional automatic backup before starting an upgrade to a new program version,

splasher

herbepa1 said:

Thanks very much. I see that my DATA files are located on my desktop instead of the default Documents/Quicken folder. Would you recommend moving the QDATA.QDF, QDATAOFXLOG.DAT and qdata_synclog.dat to the Documents/Quicken folder?

Yes, you should move the Quicken data file to the Documents/Quicken folder.
Once moved, double click on the file to start Quicken with that file, after that, it should find it on its own.   You can click on the original location in the Quicken File menu recent file list and since Quicken can't find it, it will offer to remove it from the recent file list.

Chris_QPW

BTW just in case you don't know it, there is a setting in the preferences under Backup for saving the automatic backups to whatever folder you like.  And of course you can do your manual backups where you like too.

splasher

Quicken advises against having your Quicken DATA file (not the backups) on a network or cloud drive.

Putting your backups on a network, cloud or Dropbox is perfectly acceptable.

There is nothing inconsistent in this guidance.

herbepa1

Thanks very much. I see that my DATA files are located on my desktop instead of the default Documents/Quicken folder. Would you recommend moving the QDATA.QDF, QDATAOFXLOG.DAT and qdata_synclog.dat to the Documents/Quicken folder?

jrich75

herbepa1 said:

Do I then have to make two separate backups? One for my hard drive and one for Dropbox?

In fact, when a backup is saved to Dropbox, it will be saved to the Dropbox folder on your hard drive and then uploaded to Dropbox cloud storage.  So you automatically have a local backup and a cloud backup.  There is no need to make separate backups.  Of course, it is a good idea to do both automatic backups as well as a manual backup prior to doing major updates.  Quicken does do an additional automatic backup before starting an upgrade to a new program version,

splasher

herbepa1 said:

Thanks very much. I see that my DATA files are located on my desktop instead of the default Documents/Quicken folder. Would you recommend moving the QDATA.QDF, QDATAOFXLOG.DAT and qdata_synclog.dat to the Documents/Quicken folder?

Yes, you should move the Quicken data file to the Documents/Quicken folder.
Once moved, double click on the file to start Quicken with that file, after that, it should find it on its own.   You can click on the original location in the Quicken File menu recent file list and since Quicken can't find it, it will offer to remove it from the recent file list.

herbepa1

Excellent - thank you!

Chris_QPW

BTW just in case you don't know it, there is a setting in the preferences under Backup for saving the automatic backups to whatever folder you like.  And of course you can do your manual backups where you like too.