Quicken for Mac, Hidden vs close vs archive

Question

I want to keep some old accounts that have been zeroed out but have history

If I hide them will that stop them from trying to sync online and keep them from my future reports and from ever showing up in the register etc

I just want to keep them for their history but no longer want to work with them in any way other than if I need to research something I can.

They don't need to be in this years taxes or anything.

Do I just simply HIDE them?

Thanks

keicol

jacobs · Accepted Answer

First, you should go to Settings for each account and make sure the Downloads tab is showing "Connect this account if you'd like to download transactions." If not, you're still connected and you should click "Disconnect Account".

Next, do you use the Quicken mobile app or web interface? If not, go to Settings > Mobile, Web & Alerts and set Sync to "Off" if it currently shown it is "On". Then go to Settings > Connected Services and click Reset in the Cloud Accounts section. These steps will insure that none of your account login credentials, and none of your transaction data, live in Quicken's cloud repository where it could interfere with the data in your desktop file.

Then, make sure you have marked each of the accounts as Hidden, and in Settings > Sidebar uncheck the box to display Hidden accounts in the sidebar.

As for reports, if you have existing saved reports, you will need to edit them to remove any of these now-hidden accounts; Quicken won't remove them automatically. (This makes sense, since in some cases, you might want a report to include old data from a hidden account — so it has to give you a way to do so.) For new reports you generate from Quicken's default reports, if you want to exclude data from these hidden accounts, click on Edit > Accounts, click on Selected Accounts, scroll down to the bottom, and you'll see your Hidden Accounts grouped together; de-select the checkbox for these accounts to exclude their data from reports.

Another possibility is to mark these accounts as "Separate" as well as Hidden, as that will exclude them by default from new reports. However, be aware that if you hide old investment accounts, when you look at your portfolio graph, the data from these old accounts will not be included, so your graph may look strange because your old investment accounts are excluded.

But, if you want to make sure your long-term investment graph includes the data from old accounts, you may instead want to mark them Closed but not Hidden; then in Settings > Sidebar, uncheck the box to display Closed accounts. This configuration removes those old accounts from cluttering your left sidebar, but retains their data for the portfolio graph. (However, you will then see these accounts in reports, unless you de-select then in the report's Edit > Accounts.) It's a trade-off of what you want to see and not see, as there's no setting which I find just perfect.

You also said you don't want to see this old account in the register. I should note that all accounts except "Separate" accounts, show up in the All Transactions register. But that's a good thing, because it allows you to select All Transactions when you want to use Search to find something in one of the old accounts, or when you don't recall if a transaction was in an old account or a current account.

Sorry, there's a lot to digest here! There are lots of options for the settings because different users have asked the developers to allow them to configure things differently.

Jon · Accepted Answer

Neither Hiding nor Closing the account will do all of what you want. Closing the account will automatically disconnect it so Quicken will stop trying to download transactions for it, and Hiding the account will remove it from the group registers like Banking or Investing and also from the dashboards. But transactions from Closed and Hidden accounts will still show up in reports and the All Transactions register.

To completely remove the transactions in those accounts from all of Quicken's reporting and registers, you'll need to mark the account as Separate. I don't think this will affect the online connection so you'll still have to either mark the account as closed or disconnect it in account settings to stop it trying to download new transactions.