Is there a read only option of Quicken ?

DaveB-9174

Every year since at least 2005 I've created an archive of my quicken data and cleared the older transactions from the current data file. Is there a way to convert these older archives to the current data structure and open them for review without Quicken trying to sync up the file and add transactions to the archive?

I could really use a feature like this around tax time and at other times when looking for historical financial information.

Mark1104

why do you archive the data? if you didn't archive then all the data would be readily available.

To me, archiving is a rellect of the early days of Quicken where there really wasn't a lot of hard drive storage space as the Quicken file got larger.  I began using Quicken in 1994 and archived each year's data, but stopped doing that in 2001, as the personal computer hard drives and RAM got larger.  

My point is I really think it was set up originally because of hardware limitations that is no longer the case.  I have all my data from 2001 forward in one file with no issues - comes in quite handy to look up someting from years ago and don't need to remember which year it occured in,

q_lurker

No. There is not a read-only mode.  It is unfortunate that the archive older file automatically enters the scheduled transactions it had in place when last used.

You can certainly copy that archive to a new file name and open the new name. Your original stays as it was and you trash the copy when you are done.

It is possibly a good idea to update each archive file to a recent Quicken format so that you keep access to that info. It can sometimes be a problem to open an old file with a new program version.  In doing that update, you could delete all the scheduled transactions to minimize your basic issue.

Overall, I consider that archive process counter-productive. I keep all my data in one file - back to the early 90s. 

DaveB-9174

It was for the hardware limitations that I originally started archiving. Since then I keep my data in an encrypted file on my NAS but since Quicken doesn’t support network locations for the data file I have to mount the file as a shared drive. Each time you mount the file it decrypts, the larger the file the longer the decryption takes, so to manage performance I continue to archive.