Is it possible to delete transactions for early years in an account without impacting accuracy?

mtbarnet

I have been a Quicken user for many years. Some time back there was a process to delete data in completed early year(s) in cash and credit card accounts mainly (it appeared to me) to reduce the size of the data base and to remove extraneous info. I tried it at one time, but it didn't appear to work well. Currently the size of my data is approaching 50MB and includes transactions as early as 2008. I would like to reduce size and, maybe, complexity of the data. The data includes zero balance accounts that have not been active for some time as well as accounts that have been active for a decade or more. I understand that investment accounts should not be handled in this way.

Tom Young

"Is it possible to delete transactions for early years in an account without impacting accuracy?"

If you're hoping that simply deleting, say, all checking Account entries prior to 2015 won't affect accuracy in your file, then, nope, that won't work. 

The current balance in your checking Account is the sum of every single transaction from the time you started the Account (maybe 2008) until now, so at the very least deleting all transactions from 2008 to 12/31/2014 is going to affect the current balance in the checking Account. If some of those deleted transactions involved "transfers" - moving money into Saving or maybe paying down a Mortgage - then those other Accounts will be affected too.

A file size of 50MB is not at all big and if you're thinking that slimming it down some will speed things up that very likely is not the case.

File > Copy or Backup File... > Create a year-end backup can shed some transactions, resulting in a smaller file.

Tom Young

"Is it possible to delete transactions for early years in an account without impacting accuracy?"

If you're hoping that simply deleting, say, all checking Account entries prior to 2015 won't affect accuracy in your file, then, nope, that won't work. 

The current balance in your checking Account is the sum of every single transaction from the time you started the Account (maybe 2008) until now, so at the very least deleting all transactions from 2008 to 12/31/2014 is going to affect the current balance in the checking Account. If some of those deleted transactions involved "transfers" - moving money into Saving or maybe paying down a Mortgage - then those other Accounts will be affected too.

A file size of 50MB is not at all big and if you're thinking that slimming it down some will speed things up that very likely is not the case.

File > Copy or Backup File... > Create a year-end backup can shed some transactions, resulting in a smaller file.

Ps56k2

mtbarnet said:   Currently the size of my data is approaching 50MB and includes transactions as early as 2008.

All of the things that @Tom Young mentioned above ...

- Why lose any historical data - the size of the Quicken file doesn't really impact performance.
- Balances and Transfers would be impacted.
- My Quicken file is ... 193 MB - .....   Help --> CTRL+About Quicken

.