What is the best way to create a new data file for 2026 using accounts from current data file?

Question

I've been using the same data file in quicken for the last 6-7 years and the file is getting quite large. I am concerned that it may somehow break.

For 2026 I'd like to create a new data file using a subset of my accounts, payee list, categories (and associated meta data such as tax classification),  2024, 2025 reports and my online login credentials in the password vault.  Basically there is a lot of 'clutter' from old accounts, categories that are no longer relevant and some that never were, etc. that are no longer needed that I'd like not to have them in my new data file. In addition, checking account transaction from previous years are no longer needed.

What is the best way to accomplish this?

I don't want to use the quicken close the year feature.  One way to possibly do this would be to export the current data file, rename it then open it with a new instance of quicken and manually delete (a lot) of things.  This seems to be a lot of work as there are six to seven years of checking account transactions that would have to be deleted.

I considered hiding things but that won't reduce the file size.

Suggestions please?

three_jeeps · Answer

Thanks for the feedback - appreciate the comments.  I use quicken for all of our house expenses and income, and all the expenses and income from my wifes business.  For the business, and related house deductions, I attach .pdfs of all the receipts and payments.  We were audited once and pulling together the information, even though it was ordered in digital files and hardcopy expanding files was a PITA bringing them to the audit.

I figured if I ever got audited again I'd have to use quicken to show all the data.  If I have to rely on quicken for the data, the pdf files should be in the data base.      I may rethink the pdf attachment feature.

Thank you for the valuable tip about not using Win file mgr to copy the data file.  Makes sense now that I think about it.

IIRC, I remember reading about some bad side effects doing a year end copy such as potentially missing data for reports….I assume just doing a file copy does not have any undesirable side effects?

The reason I want to start clean so to speak is that over many years my category naming and strategy changed a few times I'd like to have a better organized, logical naming of categories and accounts so that someone else looking at it won't need a decoder ring to understand what is current and useful, and what is not.

splasher · Answer

You could do the Year End Copy or the File copy processes with a future date as the cut off date (not a past date which would keep some history) so that there is none or very few transactions in the accounts.  Then delete the accounts & categories you don't want.

What you don't want to do is make a copy of your current data file using Windows File Manager/Explorer since it will have the same internal Quicken file id as the current file and confuse Quicken's cloud account process with two files with the same file id.

Not sure what is making your data file large ( in your opinion), but my data file goes back to 1996 and is only 119MB.  I don't have any attachments in it and IMO they are a mistake to keep in Q since the only way to get at them is thru Q and then one at a time.  Keep those attachments in a separate folder structure under the Documents folder in Windows.