Under Advanced Options, is creating a copy or template or creating a year end archive better?

Question

I am a Quicken user for more than 10 years.  All of that data has not been archived and is still sitting on my hard drive "C".  I would like to trim the file by moving all but 2 years of data to an archive file on an external drive and continue using the original existing files, account balances, categories, goals and financial downloading without having to start all over again by creating a new template.  In other words, my vision would be to trim the Quicken file by archiving all but 2 years of data on an external drive, delete those 8 years of data from my computer hard drive "C" (that is really full) and continue using the remaining 2 years (2020 and 2021) as if the entire 10 years are still on hard drive "C".  I am trying to avoid populating a new template (starting all over again).  Can this be done?  If so, how?  Does the Quicken Advanced Options for copying and archiving automatically provide a solution for this issue?

q_lurker · Answer

You have not offered any sense of how large your Quicken file is.  I will point out that a major contributor to bloat in the file is Attachments.  If you are scanning receipts and FI statements, etc. and attaching those to transactions, I suggest you stop that practice and to the extent possible, remove attachments that you have made.  Just a thought.

Sherlock · Answer

Of course, it can be done.  But, it is a lot harder to undo, your data will be segmented, and it may not save much space or improve performance.  The Copy will produce a file that will only have transactions in the specified date range.  This means you need to reestablish the initial balances in all of the registers in the file used going forward.  The Archive will only remove the reconciled, non-investment, non-transfer transactions in the file going forward which means it removes fewer transactions and it should be easier to reestablish the initial balances.

In my opinion, the best choice is not to Copy or Archive.  Disk space is cheap.