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Archiving by account rather than time

M Scott C

I would love to trim my Quicken file, it goes back to the mid-90s. Running Quicken Deluxe for Windows.

Quicken is an incredible resource when it comes to knowing when you purchased items or dealt with other expenditures in life, so I don't want to lose access to those transactions.

While I'd love to archive my file, I don't want to lose access to my checking account history and credit card histories over the years. But I really want to archive my 401ks along with investment and savings accounts that I no longer use.

So how can I archive specific accounts, but not archive other accounts?

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Accepted answers

NotACPA

In your investment accounts (but not banking type accounts) you can open the account and then click on the GEAR icon in the upper right and click "Archive Transactions", which will move any transactions in which you no longer hold a position to an Archive account, leaving intact all transactions with open positions.

This needs to be done on an account-by-account basis … and take a backup before any Archiving, just in case.

All comments

RalphC

I don't see a need to archive. Archiving will not noticeably speed up your system whereas deleting accounts and transactions might cause havoc and corrupt your data file. Instead, close obsolete accounts and hide them. What will trim your file and speed up backup routines is deleting old attachments that are not needed. You can always view hidden accounts if you need to research anything.

NotACPA

This needs to be done on an account-by-account basis … and take a backup before any Archiving, just in case.

Chris_QPW

Note on the suggestion from @UKR if the 401K account is already one that you no longer have new transactions in, then there isn't any need to do an archive on it. The Investment Archive is for archiving old security lots/transactions to another "archive account". The only reason to do that is if you are still actively using that 401K account. The idea is that by moving the unneeded transactions to another account that you aren't going to open on a regular basis the active 401K will run faster because unlike non-investment accounts, investment accounts do slow down if you have a lot of securities/security lots/transactions in them.

So, an "inactive investment account" is basically already an "archived investment account" in this sense.

To answer the original question, there isn't a way to archive by account, to a separate data file.

M Scott C

Based on the comments so far, I'll archive, via the gear icon, my currently used investment accounts.
Regarding the older investment accounts, such as my no longer used 401k, I've got them hidden. Is there a step I need to take to make them "inactive?"

Chris_QPW

If you aren't using a given investment account, my advice is just to hide it. It is only active investment accounts that have "closed security lots" that can benefit from the investment archive. It is just moving transactions to another account that you won't access frequently.

As for other steps to make the "inactive", there really isn't anything.

Jim_Harman

One thing to check with inactive accounts is to go to Tools > Account List. Check the Show hidden accounts box and make make sure the inactive accounts are not set up for downloading. If they are, click on Edit and on the Online Services tab, deactivate them. This will save time during One Step Updates and in one recent case, stopped the downloading of incorrect share prices in an investing account.

See this discussion

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7964477/vanguard-issues-qqq-msft-prices-won-t-update

Chris_QPW

I didn't think about it until @Jim_Harman mentioned it, but if you are still downloading the quotes for a security you are no longer using, it would be a good idea to turn that off and hide that security.