Are there any "best practices" documents providing recommendations for maintaining Quicken QDF files

blairsanders

I recently discovered my Quicken QDF file with 30 years of history was corrupted and I was unable to download transactions from selected financial institutions. I recovered most of the history by exporting and importing the transactions to a new file, and I've been slowly cleaning up the inconsistencies and errors introduced by the export/import process over the last few weeks. Do you have recommendations for maintaining QDF files in order to avoid another occurrence of this type of corruptions, including recommendations for the maximum number of transactions, or years of history, or file size, or ways to deal with inactive accounts (archiving?) that would minimize the possibility of future corruption?

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @blairsanders

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to ask your question although I apologize that you have not received a response.

One recommendation I can provide is to avoid saving the active data file on a cloud or network drive. I have seen this cause problem and is best to avoid doing so.

I would also suggest being sure to save backups before any major changes such as installing an update.

Hopefully, others will come along and offer more suggestions!

-Quicken Tyka

Quicken Francisco

Hello @blairsander

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue. While I don't have the most experience with large/longstanding files there's always a couple of things that I would recommend when trying to keep your file clean and organized. 

I would make sure to keep your income/bill related items up to date so that we don't have any old ones that could potentially give us headaches. Make sure to deactivate any accounts that aren't active anymore. This will prevent any future issues where we may have issues finding an error and we're unable to find an account we're having trouble with. 

Another thing that I do see occasionally is creating a year end copy. This can be used in a couple different ways like just creating a copy of your existing files with any transactions that have been reconciled. The other option is that you can also do it to cut down the number of transactions in your file if it may be becoming a bit too large. It'll let you select the earliest date you would like to see transactions and then create a copy of showing only the transactions from that date and beyond. I'll leave an article down below that explains a bit more in detail

https://www.quicken.com/support/creating-year-end-copy-end-calendar-year

Other users may have some more tips as they know more from experience than I do when it comes to this topic but these are some good places to start currently. 

If you do have another question feel free to let us know!

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

blairsanders

Thanks for your suggestions. I don't use a network or cloud drive for my QDF file. I will start paying more attention to archiving old accounts and culling old transactions. I've also started running the Validate and Repair function more frequently, though it doesn't seem to identify all sources of corruption.

Also, I can't seem to activate the Super Validate function since doing that a few weeks ago while I was on a call with Quicken Support. Clicking on Validate and Report while pressing Ctrl+Shift now just brings up the normal Validate function, not Super Validate. Am I activating this correctly?

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @blairsanders

Thank you for the response and the additional details, although I apologize that you are having trouble Super Validating the file.

Holding Ctrl + Shift and selecting File > File Operations > Validate and Repair is the correct sequence to Super Validate the file. 



If you are still experiencing this trouble, I would recommend rebooting your computer and attempting the steps once more.

Please let us know how it goes.

-Quicken Tyka