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How Does File Copy For Date Range Work

BryanK

I have transactions and accts going back to early 2000s I would like to clean up. What I want to do is make a copy of current file with transactions from 2020 to present and start using that as my main daily file (keeping old one for archive purposes). Just a few questions for anyone who is familiar with this functionality:

Is the file copy smart enough to carry over investment cost basis data (pre-cutoff date) to keep cost basis correct for investment accounts
After the copy if I download transactions from institutions, is it going to try to re-download all the old transactions?
Anything else to be aware of with this function?
Has anyone used the file copy for date range with success?

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Comments

splasher

Here is a screen snippet of the File Copy process:

As you can see, you can decide about invest transactions, and you will want to include them regardless of their dates.

No, the downloads will not try to back fill the deleted transactions, the financial institutions decide how far back to go and it is normally 60-90 days.

Q will remove the older transactions and recalculate the Opening Balance of each account so that the Ending Balance stays the same to prior to the purge.

ADVICE? Don't do this. You will regret it later when you find that you have to look at multiple files to find things. My current file goes back to 1996 and is a perfect diary of my financial life all in one place. You won't be able to recombine the data files (extremely difficult to do) in the future if you ever wanted to see any reports over time.

Chris_QPW

@BryanK said:

"Is the file copy smart enough to carry over investment cost basis data (pre-cutoff date) to keep cost basis correct for investment accounts"

No, it isn't. People that "want to speed up/reduce the size" of their data files get this wrong all the time, both with copy and year-end archive.

Given the complexity of different security lots that might be open or such, neither of these operations will normally remove old investment transactions.

In the case of year-end archive, it will never remove them. In the case of copy if you select to include them, none will be removed; if you select to remove them it will just remove all the investment transactions before the starting date you gave. It is a pure brute force removal that you would have to fix up.

nmestanas

My file goes back to 2001. I used Quicken long before that but had a gap in usage of about a year so I started over.

I've not used this feature due to the reasons cited above. You can certainly try it, just backup your current file first, give the new one a distinctive name and see how it goes.

I have a couple of dozen closed accounts. They are closed, hidden, kept separate, and I even prefixed them with "z_" so they don't appear in my current register, account lists or reports and if I show hidden accounts, they all show up at the bottom of their respective account type.

My Quicken file is under 90K (no attachments) so it's not consuming a lot of space. Quicken is still responsive given the age of the PC I run.

BryanK

Thanks for all the replies. Guess can try it out on a copy, taking a screenshot of the Accounts Pane before/after to see if anything got lost