Clean my data file without losing prior information

Trish107

Late last century I started using Microsoft Money. Around 15 years ago I converted that data file to Quicken including accounts, reminders, categories, payees, etc. The whole shebang. I have never done anything except "close" accounts and open new ones. Needless to say my file is huge and I'm starting to experience some weird anomalies.

I'd like to somehow "clean out" all the old unused stuff but not lose it. As amazing as it sounds I've still occasionally needed information from 20 years ago.

How do I go about reducing and sanitizing my data file so it only includes current accounts and data as well as clearing out the hundreds (if not thousands) of categories and payees that haven't had any activity in many, many years ?

Thank you!

Jim_Harman

How big is "huge"? Do you have a lot of attachments you don't need any more?

What sort of anomalies are you seeing? It is unlikely that deleting stuff will make things better.

Usually you will not want to delete Categories, because then any transactions that use them will become Uncategorized. If you have old Categories you don't use any more you might consider merging them with your current categories then deleting the unused ones.

You can also standardize Payees to reduce the total number of Payees, but that is largely a manual process for existing Payees.