Partially trimming data file to last 10 years (edit)

jgackson

My data file goes back to about 1980, including all the accounts and assets that have come and gone since then. Now and then it's required V&R, but that's gone reasonably smoothly. And it's appeared to be working fine for some months now, maybe even a couple of years.

But, silly me, when I started getting those "enter a valid date" popups I thought it might be wise to to a V&R even though everything seemed fine. Big mistake: the V&R told me there were several unknown accounts, and then lots of problem transactions involving those accounts, and then created placeholder names for about 10-15 such ghost accounts (all with zero balances) and almost doubled in size (from 300MB to 500MB).

Looking at the transactions in the ghost accounts, I could identify most of them—they were credit-card and asset accounts that we'd stopped using and I'd closed years ago. I went through and laboriously renamed the ghost accounts, then re-closed them, but then realized that the V&R apparently had duplicated lots of transactions involving the ghost accounts, which presumably is why the file size grew so much.

In the event I decided not to work with the "repaired" file, and instead restored a backup from a few days ago. Looking at the restored file, I can see that old accounts are missing from the account list (even showing hidden accounts), and those lost accounts seem to correspond to the ghost accounts the V&R found. Since the lost accounts are all closed, they're not having any effect on my current operations, and so I'm continuing to use the restored file.

But I think the right answer, if there's an easy way to do it, is to somehow trim my working file of all transactions that are, say, more than 10 years old, but to do that without affecting the balances in accounts I'm still using—sort of the "year end archive" process, but keeping 10 years instead of 1, or the "create a copy" process, but keeping the OSU connections live.

Anyone know how to do that, other than by creating a copy trimmed to 10 years and then reactivating all the OSU connnections?

Quicken Kristina

Hello @jgackson,

The tools in Quicken that can trim a file are Year end Archive, Create a Copy, and in investment accounts, there's an option to archive transactions. None of those tools would do what you are wanting, since even the one that comes the closest (create a copy), would still require you to reconnect your financial institutions.

If the restored file is working as needed, then perhaps the easiest path forward is to keep using the restored file, and make sure you have frequent backups to restore from if needed.

If the file isn't working as needed, then you can try removing older accounts and transactions manually. Unfortunately, that requires a lot of work, so it wouldn't count as an easy fix.

Another possibility is to start a new Quicken file. The benefit of doing this is starting fresh would get rid of any data issues (and as long as you don't delete or overwrite the old file, it would still be available for reference). The down side (aside from having to set everything back up again) is not all financial institutions would offer the amount of history you want. You may be able to download .QFX files from the financial institutions web sites (if they offer that option) to get additional history, but even then, you may not be able to get a full 10 years worth of data.

I hope this helps!