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Slow performance with investing accounts - Maximum security reference?

gaperri

I am having problems with the speed at which Quicken accesses my investment accounts. I have archived transactions in the hope that would speed things up. It did not. I am using the latest version of Quicken Premier.

The latest validation found no data errors, no read errors and it passed all consistency checks.

The validation then indicates Maximum security reference: 599, number of securities: 599. and then refers to old style transaction updated of 655.

Can someone explain to me what all of that means and if my speed issues are a function of maxing out the number of securities?

Thanks for your help.

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Accepted answers

Jim_Harman

600 securities should not be a problem.

Can you quantify how slow it is? When do you see the speed problems? Are some accounts faster than others?

Please go to Tools > Account list.
If the number of transactions is not listed, click on Options at the bottom left and enable that.
How many transactions are in each of your active investing accounts?

GeoffG

Yes, that's a real head scratcher and no documentation to explain the reference. Here is something I saved that may help.

Hi All,

This is a recent addition, developed as a troubleshooting tool--we were finding that in some cases, investment crashes were due to out of range security numbers (i.e., the "Max Ref" number is far above the "Securities" number). This discrepancy is typically caused by data damage, and we were seeing Max Ref numbers in the 50,000+ range, causing a huge memory resource drain and a crash.

There's now a tool to use to renumber the securities, which should resolve the specific issue: just hold CTRL+Shift and then click "Move Transaction" in an investment register--you'll be prompted to run a utility to renumber the securities. Using CTRL+About first lets us confirm whether this discrepancy is the cause of an investment crash.

From <https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7733014/what-is-securities-max-ref>

Jim_Harman

I edited the discussion title to clarify the issue.

Are other parts of Quicken, banking and credit card accounts for example, also slow, or do they perform OK?

I suggest you create a test data file with an off-line investing account and a few transactions and see if that is also slow. It the test file performs OK, that would indicate that the problem is with your data file and not with your Quicken installation.

As a quick check, what is the size of your data file? Do you make extensive use of attachments?

All comments

Jim_Harman

GeoffG

Yes, that's a real head scratcher and no documentation to explain the reference. Here is something I saved that may help.

Hi All,

From <https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7733014/what-is-securities-max-ref>

gaperri

Jim_Harman

It happens on each investment account and takes anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds to open that particular investment account.

Transactions range from 5 to 1500 dependent upon the account. There are 16 investment accounts.

Jim_Harman

UKR

If you're an active trader and/or your current investment account has many transactions pertaining to sold securities you may want to consider this:

Archive Investment Transactions

For about a year now, a new function has been available in Quicken, Archive Transactions. It will split your investment account register into two parts, leaving only those securities' transactions where you currently hold >0 shares in the active register. The rest is moved to a new Archive register within the current data file.

Having less transactions in your active register might improve performance.

Please read and carefully follow instructions here: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-archive-investment-transactions
Eventually, after a couple of years, you might consider splitting your data file in two, with all the archived investment transactions in the old file and none remaining in the active file.

Jim_Harman

@ukr,
The OP says he has already archived and there are now 5 to 1,500 transactions in his investing accounts. That should not cause extreme slowness, should it?

gaperri

@Jim_Harman

Just the investment accounts are acting sluggish. Access to all other accounts happen as soon as I click on them.

I have archived the investment accounts with no change in performance. My data file is 195,452 KB. I have another file that I use as well which is 24,240 KB. Each has the same attributes of sluggish investment accounts but all other accounts or quick to open.

Chris_QPW

So, are you saying that even accounts with only 5 transactions in them are slow?
Also, is this lack of performance new, or has it been going on for a long time?

gaperri

@Chris_QPW Each investment account irrespective of transactions is acting sluggish. It seems to have happened with the last update or two so I am going to say within the last two weeks.

Chris_QPW

Then the first thing I would try is the QCleanUI procedure to get a clean uninstall, and then reinstall, because this sounds like a Quicken program/configuration file problem, not a data file problem:
Using QcleanUI to Fix Installation Issues with Quicken for Windows
How do I download Quicken from Quicken.com to install or reinstall it?

gaperri

@Chris_QPW I did a clean uninstall and reinstall. It does not seem to have improved the performance.

Chris_QPW

gaperri said:

@Chris_QPW I did a clean uninstall and reinstall. It does not seem to have improved the performance.

Well in that case I'm pretty much out of ideas. One thought is to see how it performs on another machine if you one available.