nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Backup size went up (Q Mac)

Gilles Pétrin

Hi to all of you,

Since mid-September 2024 my back up file size went from from 126,9 Mo to 9,64Go. I didn’t add or change anything to my settings. What am I backing up now that I did not before? Info’s on my system: MacBook Air M2 2022

Séquoia 15

Quicken Deluxe Canada

Version 7,9,1

Build 709,54540,100

Gilles,

Thanks for your help

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

All comments

John_in_NC

Out of curiosity, try File: Save a Backup and save one locally.

See what the file size is. (All your backups with the smaller size in your screenshot are Pre-Updates performed before software updates.)

Gilles Pétrin

Hi John, thanks for your reply. I did save a backup to an external drive and the size of the file is almost the same 9.63Go. Definitely something went wrong with the software update. Am I the only one having this problem? Any other recommandation?

Many thanks for your help.

Gilles

Jon

How big is your Quicken data file? Did it also get larger?

Gilles Pétrin

I'm not sure if this the right information for your question. If not, please let me know how to get the information.

jacobs

I'm not sure if this the right information for your question. If not, please let me know how to get the information.

No, that Get Info window is for the Quicken program itself, not your data file.

To find your live data file, in Quicken click the red "Q" in the upper right corner of the main screen, and select "Show in Finder" from the dropdown menu. then do Get Info to show the size of the data file.

Gilles Pétrin

Here it is 10,81Go. It’s getting bigger every day even if I didn’t enter new data.

Jon

Well that would explain why your backup files are so large. The real question is why your data file got so big.

In version 7.9 Quicken added the ability to store attachments for accounts. Did you add attachments to your Quicken file?

Gilles Pétrin

I did not add many attachments, just One and I deleted it when I started to see how much Time it was taking to shut down Quicken at the end of a session.

Gilles Pétrin

Do you believe that I am at the point of restoring last version of pre-update backup! What Will happen to my Quicken version that I am using. Will it be compatible?

So many questions. I have been using Quicken for something like 25 years and never had problems before.

jacobs

@Gilles Pétrin I guess we should have asked before all of this whether your data file is stored locally on your computer's hard disk, and not on iCloud or Dropbox or other cloud storage service? Storing the data file on a cloud service can produce a number of undesirable and potentially disastrous results.

Assuming your data file is indeed on your hard drive and not on iCloud or Dropbox, the next thing we should do is take a peek inside your Quicken data file to see where all the space is being consumed. Inside? Yes, the Quicken data file is a special type of Mac data file called a "package", which is like a wrapper around multiple files and folders to make it appear as a single file.

Navigate once again to your live Quicken data file, by clicking on the red "Q" icon in the upper right of the Quicken window and select "Show in Finder" from the drop-down menu. Now, Control-click on the .quicken file, and select "Show Package Contents" from the drop-down menu:

When you select Show Package contents, you should see in the Finder a list that looks something like this:

If you're seeing just folder icons, click on the Show Items button in the Finder window and select As List:

Then you should see something similar to the screenshot above. so what does this show us?

The item called "data" is the actual database used by Quicken. In my example, it shows 103.8 MB. How large is yours? Is it almost as large as the full 10.81 GB used by your Quicken data file, or is it much smaller?

You can also click one by one on each of the folders, and do Command-i or (File > Get Info) to show the size of that folder. For most people, the folder sizes are generally quite small. Pay special attention to the "attachments" folder; it should show that it is 0 KB if there are no attachments:

The outcome of this examination will give us an indication of what do do next. Is your attachments folder quite large? Or is the file called "data" quite large?

Gilles Pétrin

Answers to your questions:

I guess we should have asked before all of this whether your data file is stored locally on your computer's hard disk, and not on iCloud or Dropbox or other cloud storage service? Storing the data file on a cloud service can produce a number of undesirable and potentially disastrous results. DATA IS STORED ON MY HARD DRIVE

Assuming your data file is indeed on your hard drive and not on iCloud or Dropbox, the next thing we should do is take a peek inside your Quicken data file to see where all the space is being consumed. Inside? Yes, the Quicken data file is a special type of Mac data file called a "package", which is like a wrapper around multiple files and folders to make it appear as a single file.

THE DATA FILE IS 108.7 MB BUT THE ATTACHMENTS FILE IS 10,69GO LARGE. SO I BELIEVE THIS THE PROBLEM.

Gilles Pétrin

Jacobs, I believe I found the problem. Opening every attachments look at what I have found My Photos Library.photolibrary is included and take 10,46Go. I don’t know what I did to do that…. Let’s call it a senior moment🤦‍♂️. How do I delete it? Just hit delete or need to do something else? Many many thanks!

jacobs

THE DATA FILE IS 108.7 MB BUT THE ATTACHMENTS FILE IS 10,69GO LARGE. SO I BELIEVE THIS THE PROBLEM.

Indeed! I'm glad we've pinned down what's going on, and I'm glad it's not some unknown corruption in your database.

There are a few ways you can hunt down the attachments to remove them. One way would be to delete all the subfolders inside that "attachments" folder, but I would NOT recommend that because your Quicken database will still show there aer attachments even though you deleted them externally.

The best way to attack this is to check for the two types of attachments which could exist: attachments to transactions and attachments to accounts. For the former, click on All Transactions in the left sidebar, and then make the the Attachments column is visible in the register (click the Columns icon in the bottom toolbar, and check Attachments if it is not currently checked). Then click on the paper-clip (attachments) icon in the header row of the All Transactions register. This will sort any/all attachments together at the top or bottom or your register. You can them proceed to delete the attachments from each of the transactions; you unfortunately need to do this one transaction at a time, as there is no attachment management capability in the software. Hopefully you have none, or one, or only a small number of transactions with attachments to delete.

Then, you need to look at any accounts which might have attachments. Unfortunately, there is no way I know of to see which accounts have attachments; you need to Control-click on each account in the left sidebar and pull the menu down to Attachments. If there are any, you'll see them at the bottom of the dropdown menu, like this…

If there are one more more attachments, select Show Account Attachments, and in the resulting window, select the attachments and click the Delete button.

If you were to peek "inside" the Package of your data file, you would see at this point that your "attachments" folder has shrunk (to zero if you deleted every attachment), and a "deleted attachments" folder now exists. You need to quit Quicken and re-launch it, at which time Quicken will purge the deleted attachments for good. Quit again, and you should find your data file — and your backup file — have shrunk back to the expected size closer to 100 MB instead of 10 GB.

Jon

I might be overly paranoid, but before deleting your photo library from your Quicken file you should double check to make sure the original copy is still where it's supposed to be (which is in the Pictures folder in your home directory). If the original is no longer there then you would want to copy it out of your Quicken file's attachment folder before deleting it.

Gilles Pétrin

Jacobs the file is now 348,3 MB which is more realistic now. I want to thank you very much your support. Very much appreciated. Have a great week-ends. Gilles

Gilles Pétrin

M’y photo library is still there, it’s always better to double check before deleting something, Thanks for the heads up!