Security List Cleanup

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Has anyone found value in cleaning up the Security List? Or had problems after clean-up? My data file goes back 13 years (or whenever MS Money was retired), and I see so many securities in there with no symbol, different variations of the same thing. I like to keep things clean so part of me wants to:

1) delete everything with no shares and no transaction history

2) uncheck the 'Download Quotes' option for everything without a symbol or without any shares

Normally I would just do it, but Quicken is so fragile I don't want to find out months from now that I messed something up then need to spend hours cleaning up the clean-up. Thanks!

Jim_Harman

In my experience, Quicken will not let you delete items from your Security List unless there are no transactions associated with them.

You can see if a security has transactions by clicking on the security name in the Security List to see the Security Detail view.

You will want to keep any securities that have a Type of Market Index or that you want on your Watch List even if they have no transactions.

If there are securities that you held at one time but are no longer interested in, you can check un-check the Download Quotes and Watch List boxes and check the Hide box and by default they will not appear in selection lists.

It is also a good idea to un-check the Download Quotes box for securities that have a blank or invalid ticker symbol.

You should not delete old unused accounts. You should disconnect them from downloading, but I do not recommend closing them, because that action cannot be reversed.

NotACPA

Go ahead and do what you've written. Just take a backup before starting, and at intervals during the process so that you don't have to do a huge clean-up.

Just make sure to use different names for those backups so they don't over-write each other.

splasher

Just because a security has no shares, does not mean you can delete it from the security list, there maybe (probably is) history tied to the security and you can't delete it without deleting the transactions that used that security. Just like you can't delete a category that is used somewhere in your data file.

I predict that your file will become a mess if you just delete things willy nilly.

Jim_Harman

In my experience, Quicken will not let you delete items from your Security List unless there are no transactions associated with them.

You can see if a security has transactions by clicking on the security name in the Security List to see the Security Detail view.

You will want to keep any securities that have a Type of Market Index or that you want on your Watch List even if they have no transactions.

If there are securities that you held at one time but are no longer interested in, you can check un-check the Download Quotes and Watch List boxes and check the Hide box and by default they will not appear in selection lists.

It is also a good idea to un-check the Download Quotes box for securities that have a blank or invalid ticker symbol.

You should not delete old unused accounts. You should disconnect them from downloading, but I do not recommend closing them, because that action cannot be reversed.