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How do you archive

BarryJr

I like to archive past years old accounts.

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splasher

See this FAQ: FAQ - Year End Copy

If you do this, you will need to periodically open up that archive file to make sure that Quicken can open it in the future. Also, after making it, open it and delete all of the scheduled reminders (Tools menu) in it so that when you do open it in the future, Quicken doesn't enter all of the reminders that have happened since it was created.

Personally, I think it is a mistake to do YEC, my data file goes back to 1996.

FrielJames1960

Does anyone have performance issues due to the size of their account? I'm back to 1987 data wise and greater than 50 active accounts (plus at least than many closed but still on the file).

Ps56k2

Never understood why anyone would do this.... just keep all your data in one place, in one file -

If you want to see and compare the contents of your QDF file - .....
Hold CTRL and ... About --> Quicken

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/ip/xxc36ge7u7wz.jpg

Chris_QPW

From what I have seen the performance of a given Quicken data file has more to do with "what is stored" than how much/its size. In other words one thing that tends to do it for investment accounts is an "active trader" that has lots of securities, transactions, and security lots. Other causes seem to be certain types of corruption. And there have been reports of problems with more than about 30,000 transactions in one non investment account.

Michael 85

Thanks for this thread! I've just let my file "roll" since 1994, with a significant lull in transactions for a period when I was working and living out of the country. Seems that leaving it alone is the consensus and will do this. It comports to my long-held perspective that the chances of something going wrong and data being lost are too great trying to archive, as long as the software is performing adequately.

FYI, my stats are attached - at least I think so as it doesn't directly show it as an attachment in the comment box.

BTW - if anybody has a word of caution about my file size (I'm nearing 60k transactions and well over 200MB), please advise.

mcfoshay

My file is even bigger than yours - nearly 300 MB - and the program is slow, slow, slow when I try to modify entries (like enter the correct category). I currently have 16 years of data in the file, including investment transactions. In the old version of Quicken, I was able to archive say, eleven years of data and retain the most recent five years. How would I do that? Is it possible?

UKR

Michael 85 said:

...
BTW - if anybody has a word of caution about my file size (I'm nearing 60k transactions and well over 200MB), please advise.
...

Please review the following:

Is a large number of Memorized Payees slowing down Quicken?
Has your Memorized Payee List grown too big?

How many Memorized Payee List entries do you have in your file? A couple hundred? Several thousands?

Click Help in the Menu Bar. CTRL+click About Quicken and it'll tell you in a File Information window.

To trim the list 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.

mcfoshay

I wish your suggestion worked - I have 7852 payees, and I would love to have a simple way to consolidate or eliminate them. I'm using Quicken for Mac, and the alternatives you suggest don't exist - for instance, there's no Edit/Preferences/Data Entry option. The best I can find is to mark similar entries and assign "Merge" in bulk.

Chris_QPW

mcfoshay said:

I wish your suggestion worked - I have 7852 payees, and I would love to have a simple way to consolidate or eliminate them. I'm using Quicken for Mac, and the alternatives you suggest don't exist - for instance, there's no Edit/Preferences/Data Entry option. The best I can find is to mark similar entries and assign "Merge" in bulk.

Quicken Mac is a different animal (BTW this is a Quicken Windows thread).

First off it has no archiving because the belief is that it isn't needed given that it is using a modern database.

Second when they created Quicken Essentials for Mac that became the modern Quicken Mac they decided to "link" the payees to a central list. I personally think that was a mistake, but one that now that it is done there isn't going to be an easy fix. What this means is instead of having an entry for the payee in every transaction they link back to a list of payees. This is how Quicken Windows does categories. So if I have 100 transactions with the category of Food, I can rename the category Food to Dining and it will change for all 100 transactions because it is just a link back to the category list item "Food" that I renamed to Dining.

So if you delete a payee out of the payee list in Quicken Mac you will leave all the transactions that referenced it without a payee. So in Quicken Mac you can only hide payees, not delete them without affecting the transactions.

So the Memorized Payee List in Quicken Windows isn't the same at all as the Payee List in Quicken Mac. The Memorized Payee List is used doing things like assigning the category based on the payee entered or downloaded. I think in the case of Quicken Mac the QuickFill list takes on this some role.

mcfoshay

Ho boy. I just spent the last 8 hours reducing my payee list from 7900 to 5100. What a pain in the neck (literally!!!). When I ran into this kind of stuff with Quicken Essentials, I quit my beloved Quicken program after 15 (?) years of use, as Quicken Essentials was totally useless as far as I was concerned - the inability to track investments was a deal killer. It turned out that other accounting programs that would run on a Mac were even worse, so I'm grateful for the current Quicken with a full range of capabilities, but still - it could be lots better. The next step will be to edit the categories list. This version of Quicken will happily add any error as a new category, without alerting you first.

When I started my search for an answer to archiving, BTW, I selected Quicken for Mac as my platform. Dunno how I got snookered into Quicken for PC. Thanks for your insights!

Chris_QPW

Unfortunately the search on this forum doesn't look at what platform you have set as your platform. That information is only used if one looks at a person's profile.

For searching one has to be aware of the "category".
For instance:

I'm actually not very good at the searching on this forum, others are better. I personally find it very hard to use, and seldom use it. Which is mostly OK for me because I mostly answer questions, I'm not usually looking for answers unless I have to find one that I remember from the past.