Question About Saving Backups

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: On version 6.11.3 I can no longer reconcile any account.

Blastphemy

Does "File > Save a Backup" do anything other than make a direct copy of the QMac file? Could I just as easily right-click on the file and select "Duplicate," or Option-drag the file to another folder?

I often compress my Quicken file and upload that zip file to an offline backup. In the past when I've had problems, all I had to do to restore my file (as of the last backup) was to extract my QMac file and replace the damaged file with it.

lhossus

The backups produced by Quicken are zip files - i. e., they are internally organized to follow zip file specifications, and they are compressed.

One can verify this by changing the file extension of a backup file from .quickenbackup to .zip. A quick review of the content of the quickenbackup file shows the same files as are seen when using Show Package Contents on the original Quicken Data File. (Note: I did not do an exhaustive comparison - just too many files and folder levels for a quick check.)

As to whether Quicken does any additional operations: I don't remember coming across any discussion of such.

So, some thoughts:

1) Why not just use Quicken's Save a Backup? Or if the program is not currently running, then use the most recent automatic backup produced by Quicken? This would save the compression step. And if you point Quicken to the offline backup, would save the upload step too.

2) Restoring from a backup is similarly simplified: Just File > Restore from Backup. No need for an extract step.