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Data file has tripled in size (Q Mac 6.6.0)

magoodm

After February 28th my data file went from 79mb to 239mb. Has anyone else seen a similar increase? Version 6.6.0 on Monterey.

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jacobs

Is your data file stored on your local hard drive, and not in any folder mapped to cloud storage like iCloud, Dropbox or OneDrive? People have reported ballooned file sizes in the past due to storage on a cloud storage service (which is actually not supported by Quicken).

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @magoodm,

Thank you for contacting the Community.

Usually, when there is a large spike in the size of the data file, that means that there could potentially be damage to the data file. In this case, I would recommend, first, that you save a backup. Then I would recommend restoring from the most recent backup in your files. You can do this by:

In Quicken, select File > Restore from Backup...
Browse your computer or external media to find the backup file you want to restore. The Quicken backup file has the extension .quicken2017backup or .quickenbackup.
Select the most recent "pre-update" file to restore.
Click Choose.

I have also included a link to a support article that discusses saving and restoring backups in more detail:

https://www.quicken.com/support/mac/how-backup-or-restore-your-quicken-data

Please let me know how this goes, I look forward to hearing your response.

magoodm

No Jacobs. My data file has always been stored on my local drive in a location that isn't used with cloud storage. (Macintosh HD/Users/my name). I'm very aware of the problems with data files linked to the cloud and have always had my storage set at a location to avoid the issues. Several years ago I turned off mobile syncing after experiencing first hand the well known problems with it. This sudden jump in file size seemed to happen without me doing anything that might cause it.

magoodm

Jasmine. Thanks for the suggestion. I know that I can restore the February 28th backup (before the ballooning of the file), but I want to avoid that if I can since I have around 25 active accounts with many transactions after that. It will be tough to re-enter all of the new transactions.

jacobs

@magoodm I had just wanted to check on the file location, since that's a known culprit which can produce results similar to what you were seeing; I'm glad that's not the culprit. I'm assuming you haven't recently added any large documents as attachments to transactions, right?

One thing you can do is verify that it's the actual database which has ballooned in size. Navigate to the location of the data file. Control-click on the file, and select Show Package Contents. The Quicken data file is a "package file" which is a wrapper that makes files and folders appear to the Finder as a single file. You should see a folder with contents similar to this:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/km/4l8bojjkuf47.png

The file called "data" is the actual database file. Check to see if its size is most of the size of your overall Quicken data file, For instance, my Quicken data file 73.8 MB is and the "data" file is 71.7 MB. If your "data" file is much smaller than the overall size of your Quicken data file, check the other folders to see what is taking up a lot of space.

If your "data" file is what has ballooned in size, then there's nothing I know of you can do to look inside it or shrink it. You have three options: (1) ignore the size and keep going; (2) restore a backup and verify the file size is smaller; (3) export your data in QXF format, create a new file, and import the QXF data into it. Number 3 is the surest way to insure your data is clean, but it comes with downsides: you lose all your Quicken and register settings, saved reports, budget, and account connections. It's usually a last resort because of all that you need to re-configure.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @magoodm,

Thank you for your response.

Before we continue to troubleshoot, I do have a few more questions. Is your main/active Quicken file located in the hidden library? Did you access your main file from a cloud or external source? Is there a third-party app/cloud that is accessing or backing up the active data file?

I look forward to hearing your response

magoodm

Jacobs and Jasmine. Thanks for your troubleshooting suggestions. I decided to restore my 2/28 file from Time Machine and do the grunt work to restore all of the new transactions. It only took a couple of hours and everything is now there and the file is back to 79mb instead of 232mb.

For anyone interested in the steps i took, I first saved a backup of the swollen file, printed all transactions for the month of March including scheduled. Restored the Time Machine backup, did a download for all accounts, cleaned up the entries that didn't match correctly or were wrong for some reason and then went through the print out to make sure I had everything.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @magoodm,

Thank you for the response! I am so glad to hear that you found a way to restore the data file back to its original size.

Please, do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns.

magoodm

More information. When Quicken is running the data file size is 232mb. When I quit Quicken the size drops to 79mb. Jacobs, I know you also have a large data file. Mine goes back to 1989 and has 68,000 transactions. Can you check your data file when running and when closed to see if there's a difference?

Here are screen shots of my Package Contents running and closed.

Package Contents When Running.png

Package Contents When Closed.png

jacobs

@magoodm To me, your screen shot when Quicken is running looks exactly like what I've seen from other users who have the Quicken data file stored on a cloud service. The contents of the Package shouldn't change whether it's running or not, nor should the file size. Mine does not. I know you said your file is on your local hard drive, but I really suspect it is not.

You said your data file is in your User folder… but can we go back over exactly where? You wrote above that it is in ""Macintosh HD/Users/my name. With Quicken running, do you have it displaying the file name in the title bar (above the Home/Reports/Budgets/etc. menu bar)? If not, please enable Show File Name in Menu Bar in Preferences > General. Now, Command-click on the little red Q to the left of the file name, and it will display a drop-down menu of the path to your Quicken file. From what you wrote above, does this drop-down show this:
your data file name
Documents
Quicken
your user name
Users
Macintosh HD
your computer name

That is, in the Finder when you open Macintosh HD > Users > your user name, this home folder contains folders for Applications, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Library, Movies, Music, Pictures and some others. Is Quicken a folder here? And inside that Quicken folder, inside its Documents folder, is that where you see your current data file?

Do you use Dropbox or OneDrive at all on your Mac? If so, can you check the settings to make sure the cloud service is not set to sync the location containing your Quicken data.

I feel pretty certain that one way or another, your data file is being saved on a cloud storage service.

magoodm

Jacobs, thanks for following up with suggestions. The path to my data file is:
Quicken Data (my file)
Quicken Data
Martin
Users
Macintosh HD
Martin's iMac

Attached is a finder view of my Macintosh HD

Dropbox is only syncing a compressed Quicken Data file and iCloud is not syncing anything that would hold the Quicken Data file. Could the problem be that both my Quicken Data file and Dropbox are in my User folder?

Take a look and let me know if you can see anything I'm missing. Thanks again for staying with me on this.

Macintosh HD.png

jacobs

I'm sorry, but I'm not a Dropbox user, so I'm not sure exactly how you can determine which folders on your Mac have been linked to Dropbox. I think you need to look at the Dropbox desktop application's preferences to see which folders are synced. I'm pretty sure you will find that your "Quicken Data" folder, or perhaps your entire User folder, is tied to Dropbox.

If you're doubtful of that, try moving your Quicken data file to a different location. Do it from within Quicken, using the File > Move To… command. You could move it back to Quicken's default location, which is inside your User > Library > Application Support folder. (There may be a Quicken folder in that location already; if so, place the data file inside the Documents folder in the Quicken folder.) Once the file is there, does it stay at the smaller size whether it's running or not, and does the Package contents remain unchanged when you launch and quit Quicken?

Jon

jacobs said:

@magoodm The contents of the Package shouldn't change whether it's running or not, nor should the file size. Mine does not. I know you said your file is on your local hard drive, but I really suspect it is not.

I see the same results as @magoodm, and I'm not using any cloud service. Here's what the package contents of my Quicken file look like when closed:

and when open:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/g0/sthm62941yy4.png

The total file size goes from ~37MB to ~117MB.

Whatever's going on, I don't think it has anything to do with a cloud service. I store my file in a folder inside ~/Documents, but the same thing happens if I move it back to ~/Library/Application Support/Quicken/Documents.

magoodm

I moved the file to the Application Support folder and nothing changed - the same file size when running and the smaller size when I quit the application. The same with Package contents. I then tried moving the file to the desktop which is definitely not synced to the cloud with no success and then to a USB drive - same thing. It really seems that it's something other than cloud storage of the data file. Any other ideas appreciated.

Jon

I checked a different Quicken file (one that I use for testing & screenshots) that has very little data in it, and that one isn't doing the same thing - the file size doesn't change, and the package contents also stay the same whether the file is open or closed, I always see the longer set of subdirectories like in my second screenshot above. I wonder if Quicken is automatically compressing its data file when it gets above a certain size.

Jon

Aha! It's the file security that does it. When I added a password to my test file, the size suddenly dropped by over half when I closed the file, and the package contents changed to match the first of my screenshots. So the file encryption must be doing a compression pass as well. Which makes sense - pull all those subfolders into a single compressed archive & then encrypt the archive.

It's interesting that the unencrypted data seems to be available on disk while the program is running.

magoodm

Jon I think you might be on to something. Maybe my actual file is 239mb and it automatically gets compressed when it quits. When I save a backup of the running application it results in the exact same size as it shows after I quit Quicken.

magoodm

Jon I confirmed it too. I turned off password protection and closed the file and the size stayed as the same large size it was when running.

jacobs

@Jon Thanks for getting to the bottom of it! I do not normally encrypt my file, which explains why I wasn't seeing the same thing as you and @magoodm.

Going back to an earlier question in this thread…

magoodm said:

When Quicken is running the data file size is 232mb.... Jacobs, I know you also have a large data file. Mine goes back to 1989 and has 68,000 transactions.

My data file goes back to 1993 (with a small number of older investment transactions), and I have a total of 66,000 transactions. If you don't have any file attachments, I'm not sure why your data file would be more than three times the size of mine (75 MB).

magoodm

> @jacobs said:
> @Jon Thanks for getting to the bottom of it! I do not normally encrypt my file, which explains why I wasn't seeing the same thing as you and @magoodm.
>
> Going back to an earlier question in this thread…
> My data file goes back to 1993 (with a small number of older investment transactions), and I have a total of 66,000 transactions. If you don't have any file attachments, I'm not sure why your data file would be more than three times the size of mine (75 MB).

magoodm

@jacobs I wonder if mine is larger because I was using the Windows version until I converted the file to Mac in 2015. I have no file attachments. I don't suppose there is any way to analyze the file to see where there might be bloat.

jacobs

@magoodm I wouldn't think the origins of your transaction data in Quicken Windows should have any bearing: a transaction is a transaction. If you write very long memos in every transaction and I don't, your transactions would occupy more space — but not enough more to explain a more-than 150 MB difference in file size. (If you had a 100-character note in every one of your 66,000 transactions, that would add only 6.6 MB to the file size!)

I don't know of any way to analyze the data in the file. Someone adept with SQL could open and poke around in the file, but you'd need to understand the file structure to make much sense of it.

The only other test I can think of would be to export your data as a QXF file and import it into a new file. This is sometimes used as a last-gasp fix for a data file with suspected corruption. You lose all your settings, budgets, reports, attachments, and account connections, but all your data is preserved. You could do it just to see if the new file size is similar to or significantly smaller than your current file size. If it's much smaller, then you'd need to determine if it's worth the work to re-set the new file up with all those lost settings, or to continue with your existing file when it's no exhibiting any signs of problems.

magoodm

@jacobs since my file has been stable for years, I'm going to leave it alone. Thanks for all of your input as well as Jon's. It turned out to be an unnecessary exercise but it was informative.