Why did my Quicken Mac data file triple in size within a few days?

Namir

Running Quicken Classic for Mac w/ macOS Sequoia 15.1.

Quicken keeps its main data file in a subfolder under my Documents area on my iMac. (It used to be in some library, and I moved it.) When I quit Quicken a backup also goes to the DropBox account I got when I purchased Quicken. Recently DropBox notified me I was approaching my 2 GB limit. When I checked the size of the Quicken data files I found both the one normally used one on my iMac and the ones in DropBox had tripled in size from Nov 10 2024 @52.6 MB to 152.5 MB on Nov 20 2024. I don't mind that they grow in size with time, but what happened such that it tripled in size in such a short period?

Thank you,

Namir Kassim

Annandale, VA

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

I received confirmation from our Mac team that the compression was turned off due to an issue. They did not provide an ETA when it will be turned back on.

Thank you!

splasher

Flagged thread to be moved to Mac forum category.

Namir

Thank you Splasher for moving my question to the correct forum.

jacobs

I believe there was an issue affecting a small number of users which the developers thought might be related to encryption and macOS. And I believe they may have temporarily changed the compression settings to test/work around whatever that issue was. Do you encrypt your file? Is is password protected? You might try removing either of those, temporarily, to see if the size of a backup file returns to what it used to be. (I don't encrypt my file, and I have seen no increase in the size of my live or backup data files.) If I am correct about what's going on, I would expect to see them return the normal compression in either the next Quicken Mac release or perhaps after a macOS update if the problem turns out to be with macOS.

Namir

Thank you jacobs, and ditto for me on encryption. I do suspect there was an OS and/or Quicken update at the pertinent time, so your hypothesis makes sense. I will await another update(s) and track what happens. Thank you again for your insight.

I welcome additional comments by others, especially any that encountered a similar issue.

Jon

@Namir I saw the same thing happen around the middle of November - both my Quicken data file and my backup files roughly tripled in size. The change didn't seem to correlate to me upgrading either Quicken or MacOS, so I'm not sure what happened.

Gilles9

I just looked

My quicken data file did triple in size to 149MB, used to be around 50 MB

My backups do show 56 MB

Wonder why the back up is about 3 times smaller than my Datafile, compression ?? that is a lot of compression

Nothing was ever encrypted, no password ever set

Namir

Fascinating. Unless someone can add more, looks like all we can do is wait?

jacobs

Wonder why the back up is about 3 times smaller than my Datafile, compression ?? that is a lot of compression

That's pretty typical. My data file is 119 MB and backups are about 44 MB, so the backup is about 37% of the live file. This is the way it has been. I suspect anyone who has seen their data file expand three-fold has or has had their file encrypted, which also compressed it. And that the developers have disabled the compression for the time being to try to prevent the encryption issue some users were experiencing.

Namir

@jacobs I see - you're saying the encryption (w/ compression) was being implemented automatically by the Quicken software - and they recently turned it off so our data files grew (by 3x apparently). Not that we did anything different on our end.

MontanaKarl

I've been experiencing the same tripling of my data file size to 180 MB for the past month or so and finally got around to taking off my encryption password as @jacobs suggested…. and indeed, the backup file is back to 60 MB. But, the main file remains bloated at 180 MB even unencrypted. Until this happened, my encrypted main file was somewhere between 60 and 70 MB.

jacobs

But, the main file remains bloated at 180 MB even unencrypted. Until this happened, my encrypted main file was somewhere between 60 and 70 MB.

It's not "bloated"; that 180 MB is the true size of your Quicken Mac data file. You've been accustomed to seeing the compressed size, because of encryption also involved compression. And currently, the compression is turned off for encrypted files.

I normally don't encrypt or password protect my data file. The data file size is currently about 120 MB, and a backup file (which is compressed) is about 43 MB. That ratio of sizes has been roughly the same for as long as I've used modern Quicken Mac.

So the only thing which has changed is that encrypted data files used to be compressed (like backups) and now they aren't, so they're close to 3 times larger than they were before. This is likely temporary until the underlying issue (it related to some people with encrypted files not being able to install updates) is resolved. We don't know whether this is an issue Quicken can fix by changing the encryption/compression settings or whether it is awaiting a fix from Apple in a future macOS update, since these functions are built into macOS.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

We're looking into this issue further.

There was mention of the file compression/size seeming to change in an earlier discussion also. Did all of you first notice this around mid-November?

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20461902#Comment_20461902

I look forward to your responses!

jacobs

@Quicken Kristina Perhaps you can check with ChrisC on the Mac development team. He's the one who posted in November about investigating a problem which seemed tied to encryption. From his post and the observed change in the file size of encrypted files, I guessed that he disabled compression on encrypted files in the 7.10.1 release. Maybe that's not what happened, but he should know if any change was made to the encryption settings. This all happened around the same time last month.

Namir

@Quicken Kristina yes, I noticed it in mid-November. I did not change anything else about how my file was saved or backed up, at least I don't think so. It just tripled in size from about 50 MB to about 150 MB. I'm hoping that as @jacobs (very knowledgeable!) posited, it will soon return, quietly in the night, to its original smaller size - like Alice. 😊

Jon

@Quicken Kristina yes, mid-November for me as well, around the 14th.

Quicken Anja

Hello All,

We have reached out internally regarding this issue and will provide an update once we have more information available.

Thank you!

tonym97

Same issue here, 95MB→310… just posting for tracking purposes.

gsulshski

Same issue here, 65MB —> 163MB.. just posting for tracking purposes. I password protect the file and the mac version.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

I received confirmation from our Mac team that the compression was turned off due to an issue. They did not provide an ETA when it will be turned back on.

Thank you!

Alexander Bray

Same issue with version 8. 85MB—>246MB (and growing 10MB with each opening/closing of the file).

jacobs

growing 10MB with each opening/closing of the file

@Alexander Bray Are you saying that your Quicken data file is 246 MB, and if you launch Quicken and immediately quit, it increases to 256 MB in size, and if you launch and quit again, it increases to 266 MB? That's something I haven't heard of. And it's different than the issue being discussed in this thread, which is that the developers have temporarily disabled compression of the data file for users who have their file password protected/encrypted.

There are a few things I'd check or test…

• What is the size of a Quicken-generated backup file?

• Is your data file being stored on a cloud storage service, such as iCloud, Dropbox, or OneDrive? Regarding iCloud, you have to check carefully to note the location of the file on your hard drive; if you have it in a folder within your Documents folder, or a folder on your Desktop, then macOS may be actually storing those folders (and your file) on iCloud. You need to check macOS System Settings and go to iCloud Drive to see if it is on, and if it is set to store Desktop and Documents on iCloud.

One way to make sure no cloud storage is involved would be to (at least temporarily) move your data file. An easy place for this would be to create a Quicken folder inside your Home folder (e.g. Macintosh HD > Users > [your user account]), at the same level as Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, etc. Then launch Quicken by double-clicking on the data file in this new location (Quicken will then store this location for future launches), and observe whether you're continuing to see the file jump in size.

• Another thing you could check is whether you do have a password on the file, and if you do, to temporarily remove it. (To do this, choose File → Set File Password..., click Remove Password, enter the existing password, and click Remove Password.) Then quit and launch Quicken several times and observe the file size.

For what it's worth as a point of reference, I've been using Quicken for more than 3 decades; my data file is 120.4 MB and my backup is 43.1 MB.

Alexander Bray

The database is not growing, it was related to attachments—so no alarm, the file is not growing. I keep my files local. The SQL database is fixed at 220MB. Big increase from a month ago, but I do understand the issue with compression currently turned off. Thanks for the quick reply.

QuickT

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20466120#Comment_20466120

Hello Kristina. Do you know whether this has been fixed in the 8.x release just came out? It only says ~30 pesky bugs fixed in release notes. No mention of this compression issue still. For those of us that use iCloud backup by copying file, this has become an irksome issue and would like to see resolution to this or indication of intents to fix or not to fix by the developers. Thank you.

jacobs

@QuickT I can't answer for the developers, and perhaps Kristina will be able to get a comment from them. I will only note that a comment by the Quicken engineer who posted on this subject indicated that they thought the problem was actually an issue with macOS, not something under Quicken's control. If their testing proved that out, they likely would have submitted a bug report to Apple, but would then be at the mercy of Apple whether or when the issue would be resolved.

Jon

If it is a Mac OS issue, Sequoia 15.3 is expected to be released next week so maybe that will bring a fix.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the follow-up @QuickT,

No, the issue that required turning compression off is not fixed in the 8.x release. The issue is still in work. No ETA or further details are available at this time.

Thank you for your continued patience!

(CTP-11383)