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Optimizing my data file

evonderheyden

I have a data file with over 50,000 transactions and is 250MB. This data file has been in use for 23 years. As time goes on, each entry, change, report etc. has increased latency. For example, if I click over from one account to another it can take 2-7 seconds before I can do anything in that account. Accepting a downloaded transaction into my register on an investment account can take 10 seconds or more. These seconds add up. In the good old days the latency was 1 second or less. I can live with the very long load time of the application but using the app is like wading through molasses.

I have not archived old transactions because I like to have the data for historical reporting or looking up an old transaction.

Also, while all of this has gotten worse since Quicken went online, if I work offline, the experience is the same.

(Windows 10 PC with good performance - this is a only an issue Quicken)

My question is simply, what steps can I do to improve the performance of my Quicken. Will archiving really make a difference? What specifically can I do for investment accounts where Quicken is really slow to enter a new transaction.

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Accepted answers

Chris_QPW

In general, Quicken doesn't read in transaction data from a register until you open it. What's more the performance only seems to go down in investment accounts, at least until you have over 32,000 transactions in one non-investment account (and even there it seems to be more "it acts strange" instead of performing bad).

So, the main "performance boosting" actions for investment accounts has always been to move closed securities/lots to another account that won't get opened very often. In recent years Quicken Inc has even made that easier with the introduction of the "Archive Transactions" menu item on the gear icon menu in the investment accounts. What it does is move all the close lots to another "****-Archive" account in your data file and fixes up the cash balance as needed.

Note that the "File → Copy or Backup File → Create a year-end archive" will not help because it will not touch the investment transactions.

All comments

Chris_QPW

Note that the "File → Copy or Backup File → Create a year-end archive" will not help because it will not touch the investment transactions.

jeeper

So, the main "performance boosting" actions for investment accounts has
always been to move closed securities/lots to another account that won't
get opened very often. In recent years Quicken Inc has even made that
easier with the introduction of the "Archive Transactions" menu item on
the gear icon menu in the investment accounts. What it does is move all
the close lots to another "****-Archive" account in your data file and
fixes up the cash balance as needed.

so - what would be the steps to follow to accomplish this for all old bought/sold stocks, etc in your single Quicken brokerage account - ?

ahhhh….tnx …
— Gear — Archive Transactions -

Chris_QPW

@jeeper as I stated above: Select the gear icon menu in the investment account and the “Archive Transactions”

evonderheyden

Tried this and it worked but it archived lots of recent transactions including ones from just a month ago. I was expecting only much older transactions to be archived. I don't want recent (last few years) transaction split between accounts. So I restored my data file from the backup.

I think another workaround would be to create my own archive account and just move those much older transactions over and make sure I don't move any transactions for securities I still hold.

q_lurker

My approach has been to use Shares Transferred between Accounts to create a new account with the holdings (by lot) as of a specific date.

If you tried to bac-date that to like 1/1/24, you would also need to move the subsequent tractions to the newer account.

There may be advantages to the Archive movement approach. I just haven’t used that process. It was created after I developed my approach.

NotACPA

@evonderheyden Did those month-old transactions also, like the older ones, close out positions? Because that's what the Archive action does … it moves closed out positions to the Archive file.

For those occasions when you need to see recent performance, just include the Archive file in your report selection.

Thus, it would only be opened when you NEED that info … not every time you use the main investing account.

Chris_QPW

I think another workaround would be to create my own archive account and just move those much older transactions over and make sure I don't move any transactions for securities I still hold.

Note that along with the new Archive Transactions they also added Move Transactions. Before that the only approach was the one @q_lurker described.

There isn't a perfect solution it just really depends on what is most important to you. I have never liked the Shares Transferred action because what it does is use the remove shares action in the old account and the add shares in the new one (with the proper cost basis calculated). Depending on what is moved this can cause a lot of transactions in both accounts, and it will also throw off any of the portfolio view numbers that are based on "return" because the return number is calculated based on the transactions that now no longer exist.

One the other hand, the Move Transactions/Archive Transactions seems fine for "optimizing" but if one uses it for say moving between two financial institutions then you lose the record that these shares existed at the other financial institution. They show up as if they were bought at the new financial institution. Which you may or may not care about.

The Archive Transactions has another problem that I find a bit "undesirable" in that if you are going to do it again, it will create yet another "archive account".

And it is worth noting that for speeding up the performance this only applies to the situation where you in fact have a lot of closed securities. For a buy and hold investor that has used the same account for the whole time and never sold anything thing, this wouldn't do anything for them.