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application performance question -Quicken 2017 [Edited]

Special K

I am using Quicken 2017 Home and Business on Windows 10 and notice that when typing anything into the search bar that appears at the top right of any account, there is a full 1-second delay between when each character is typed and when it appears in the text box and the registry updates. Is this normal performance for Quicken? It seems pretty sluggish.

I've been using Quicken since 2010 and can't recall when exactly I started noticing the sluggish response rate, but I know it's been years. I just now thought of posting my question on here to see if there is anything that could be done to fix this or if my experience is normal.

For reference I have a total of 4 credit card accounts, the largest of which has about 5k transactions. I have a couple checking accounts, one with a few hundred transactions and one with a couple thousand. I also track a few investment accounts, although the Quicken GUI doesn't list the total number of transactions for these accounts and I'm not seeing any quick way to report that (is there one?).

In any case, this doesn't seem like an absurdly large database in absolute terms so I'm not sure why there's such a long delay when typing anything into the search box. Can anything be done to fix this (including upgrade to a newer version if necessary)?

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NotACPA

Have you validating your Q data file?

Take a backup, just in case, then FILE, Validate and Repair File (might be different in Q'17) and click "Validate File" and OK.

Special K

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20442930#Comment_20442930

I ran the validation and this was the output:

QDF: Validating your data. No errors.

QEL: No read errors.

QEL: All internal consistency checks passed.

[Sat Jul 27 22:28:33 2024] 3 scheduled transactions corrected

Corrected 9 Bought or Shares Added transactions that were incorrectly categorized as a realized gain. If any of these should have been for a Cover Short Sale, you should modify them. Listed:

After running the validation, Quicken is still just as sluggish as it was before. Do you generally find Quicken to be very sluggish when typing into the search box in the upper right corner of an account?

Also regarding the "Corrected 9 Bought or Shares Added transactions that were incorrectly categorized as a realized gain" message above:

All 9 transactions are "Bought" transactions in a 401k. If I restore my backup from before I ran the validation, look at an investment income report, then look at all transactions in the _RlzdGain category, none of the 9 transactions flagged by the validation step even show up. What exactly is that message trying to tell me? What problem did it find?

UKR

Slow performance?
Please provide more details about your Quicken data file.
What is the file size, in KB, as shown by Windows File Explorer?
And I'd also like to see the "File Information" window (See below)
Is any cloud backup software (Dropbox, MS OneDrive, etc.) actively accessing your Quicken data file while Quicken is running?
What is the complete path and file name of your Quicken data file (e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\Quicken\QDATA.QDF)?

How much total RAM do you have installed?
How much of the available RAM is in use after Quicken has started? Windows Task Manager will give you this information. 80% or higher?

About file size and number of transactions:
You can find out how many transactions you have in your data file by doing this:

Click Tools / Account List. This should tell you how many transactions you have in each of your accounts in an optional column, "# of Transactions".
If this column is not shown in the Account List, click the Options button at the bottom of the Account List window, then click "Number of Transactions" to add the column.
File Information: Click Help in the Menu Bar. Shift+click About Quicken and it'll give you a File Information box. Please capture an image snapshot of this File Information box. Black out any personal information and attach it here.
The Windows Snipping Tool can be used to capture a partial screen image and save it to a file. Use file type PNG or JPG only.

Special K

What is the file size, in KB, as shown by Windows File Explorer?

44.6 MB

And I'd also like to see the "File Information" window (See below)

Is any cloud backup software (Dropbox, MS OneDrive, etc.) actively accessing your Quicken data file while Quicken is running?

The folder containing my Quicken data files is designated as one to be synced to Google Drive. I know Google Drive doesn't support volume shadow copy, e.g. it can't copy changes to a file while that file is in use, so presumably it syncs after I've closed Quicken.

What is the complete path and file name of your Quicken data file (e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\Quicken\QDATA.QDF)?

D:\Documents\Quicken\Current\<my_name>'s Data.QDF

How much total RAM do you have installed?

32 GB

How much of the available RAM is in use after Quicken has started? Windows Task Manager will give you this information. 80% or higher?

16 GB; Quicken itself is using 63.1 MB (which I guess makes sense given the file size).

UKR

Thank you very much for your information.
I forgot to ask about your processor chips. How many virtual engines do you have and what is the processor speed (in GHz)? For example, my laptop has 4 virtual engines, running at 1.9 GHz each.
Quicken can only run on one of your engines, so processor speed can become an issue.

What type of disk is your D: - drive? Internal hard drive or USB - connected external stick or hard drive.
External drives tend to go to sleep between I/O actions and take a few seconds to spin up again.
The device's USB version also controls / limits I/O throughput rate.

Before you start working on items mentioned below, please be sure to create a backup of your data file … just in case something were to go wrong.

File Information reports that you have 412 Categories.
Subcategories can be nested up to 16 levels deep. How many actual subcategory levels do you use? 2 levels, 3, 4, more?
The more deeply subcategories are nested, the more calculations need to take place to update rollup totals from lowest towards highest category levels every time you add, change or delete a transaction.

File Information also reports that your Memorized Payee List contains 983 entries.
Do you really have and need to deal with nearly 1000 individual payees? Or could a little cleanup help reduce this number down to a more manageable number?
If you have spelling variations of the same payee, consider using Edit / Find/Replace to standardize Payee Names, e.g., McDonalds, McDonald's, MacDonalds, etc. to only McDonald's

To trim the MPL list and keep it in shape please do this:
In Edit / Preferences / Data Entry and Quickfill make sure you have a checkmark at
[√] "Remove memorized payees not used in [xx] months"
and set [xx] to something like "18". Do not set it to zero. IMHO, you should set the number to 12 or higher for best results, so that once-a-year payees don't vanish.
Restart Quicken for the change to take effect and housekeeping to clean up the Memorized Payee List.
Check the File Information box again to see the reduced count.

How many individual Budget tables do you have in your data file?
Every named budget table (Budget 1, Budget 2, Budget 3, etc.), even if you no longer use it from years past, is updated every time you add, change or delete a transaction.
Deleting unused budget tables reduces overhead.

Special K

I forgot to ask about your processor chips. How many virtual engines do you have and what is the processor speed (in GHz)? For example, my laptop has 4 virtual engines, running at 1.9 GHz each.

It's a core i7-7700K - 8 cores, 4.2 GHz. This was high end when I built this PC in 2017. I didn't think Quicken was a particularly taxing program when it came to CPU usage, plus the version I'm using, 2017, is from the same year as the PC I'm using.

What type of disk is your D: - drive? Internal hard drive or USB - connected external stick or hard drive.

Internal HDD - 7200 RPM.

Can you tell me what your "File Information" window looks like for comparison? When you use Quicken, do you notice sluggishness when typing into the search box in the top right corner of an account?

UKR

Can you tell me what your "File Information" window looks like for comparison? When you use Quicken, do you notice sluggishness when typing into the search box in the top right corner of an account?

No sluggishness anywhere during typing. There's got to be something else in Windows or some other program that's slowing you down. Microsoft OneDrive, an Antivirus program, a display driver, something …

Here's my File Information.

Chris_QPW

Your database is tiny, but in its overall size and the number of transactions you have in it, but I doubt that it the problem anyways.

When you first access an account Quicken reads it into memory.

You seem to have something that is slowing down the GUI.

Is this slowness only in the register search?

The one thing that is special about the register search is it is incremental. Quicken will be filtering your register as you type. I don't think there any other parts of Quicken where it does that except maybe on some lists.

Are you using 1-line display in the register? Some have noted performance problems when in 1-line mode.

You also mentioned that you have your data file in Google Drive, it probably isn't the problem, but I would try it in a folder that isn't in any kind of cloud folder. You might also try turning off any anti-virus software and backup software (just as a test) to see if they are affecting the performance.

Special K

Is this slowness only in the register search?

I also notice it when manually entering new transactions into my 401k account. It often seems to take 5 seconds after I click "Enter/Done" for the transaction details window to disappear and the register to update.

Are you using 1-line display in the register? Some have noted performance problems when in 1-line mode.

Yes, and switching to 2-line display solved the problem. This is what was causing the slowness when typing in the search bar. I had no idea there was a 1-line vs 2-line display option. That said, I prefer the 1-line. Why is it so much slower than 2-line? Are there any possible fixes I can try to speed up searching when using the 1-line display mode?

You also mentioned that you have your data file in Google Drive, it probably isn't the problem, but I would try it in a folder that isn't in any kind of cloud folder.

I copied my QDF file to a location not being indexed by a cloud drive and saw the same behavior (slow register updating when using 1-line mode and 5+ seconds required to manually enter new transactions into my 401k account.

Chris_QPW

Why, is the 1-line performance slow for some people (it isn't for me)? Most likely because of a bug in Quicken that has yet to be found and fixed.

The problem with an investment account performance is a well-known performance problem with Quicken. The investment accounts have a problem with a large amount of transactions/securities/security lot in any given investment account. And "large" is actually pretty small in an investment account in comparison to the number of transactions in a non-investment account before any performance drop is seen.

The only workaround is to move closed lots to another account. This works because Quicken doesn't read in the account data until you access that account. Since you are on Quicken 2017 you don't have the new "archive transactions" feature that actually moves transactions between accounts, so you would have to use the "Shares Transferred between Accounts" action, which removes shares from one account and adds them back in the other.

But note if you are looking for "zero time" entries, you are never going to achieve that with Quicken investment registers.

Special K

The only workaround is to move closed lots to another account.

What exactly do you mean by "closed lots"? My 401k plan has years of transactions but all those shares are still in the account except in some cases where one fund class was automatically converted to another.

Chris_QPW

When you buy X shares at a given price Quicken records that as a "security lot". When you sell all of those shares the security lot is "closed" as in has no shares in it, and as such moving it to another account doesn't affect the current account's value.

In the case of a 401K account, you may never sell the shares and as such I'm afraid that this workaround will not apply to you if that is the case.