Updating Accounts (about Year-End data file splitting for Q Mac)

Question

My current Quicken data file goes back to 2019. It includes investment accounts and banking accounts. It also has a whole lot of transactions, most of which I will never need to see again. What I would like to do is "update" the file and eliminate all of the old banking transactions so that information goes back to, say, 2023. But I don't want to eliminate any investment transactions. If it possible to do this, how do I go about achieving my goal?

If it is not possible, or not very easy to do this, how would I create two new files, one for banking and another for investing?

Basically I would like to simply remove four or five years of old banking information so the file itself is not so large.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

John_in_NC · Answer

@jacobs gave a good overview of the drawbacks and hardships of doing this. And even with the vote post, I suggest you think twice about what you ask for.

The Windows side has this feature, and it is more complicated/causes more issues than would be initially apparent-especially if you have investment accounts. But, that aside, you are creating far more work for yourself as you will have to maintain all these older data archives.

Most people swear they don't need that older data-until they do. And then they come back asking how to put the files back together (which you can't). But, if you also haven't been updating your archives to the most recent version, you run the risk of the current version not being able to even open the older archives (databases) because too many years have passed since releases. This does happen.

I would leave well enough alone and keep everything in a single file you can maintain/backup. You likely won't see performance issues.

jacobs · Answer

There is no a feature in Quicken Mac to allow you to achieve or separate older banking transactions into a separate file. There is a long-running Idea thread requesting such functionality, and you can add your vote and optionally a comment here:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7684427/add-save-a-copy-feature-similar-to-year-end-copy-21-legacy-votes

I guess my first question is why you feel you need to eliminate three or four years of transactions. Both registers and reports can be set to show a custom date range (e.g. 1/1/2023 to present), so the old transactions aren't in your face. What problem are you trying too solve?

In my case, I have more than 30 years of transactions in my data file, and the program isn't slowed much by having all those transactions. I rarely did back into much older transactions, but I do find it useful from time to time, such as when I want to know when I last replaced the hot water heater, or when we first visited a certain restaurant.

I do understand that people with many years of data who have experienced "life changes" like a divorce/break-up/death or kids being grown might want to not see older transactions at all, and might want to purge older Payees or categories to not be reminded of the past, and for that reason, I think it's desirable for the developers to implement a way to separate out old data. But for many people it's not really a necessity.

If you really want to tackle this on your own, you can do it manually, but there are "gotcha" issues you need to look out for. First, capture the current balance in each account before deleting anything; once you delete years of transactions, you'll need to create an opening balance transaction to bring your current balance back to where it was before the deletions. Also keep in mind that deleting the old transactions will cause linked transactions to your investment accounts to be severed into unlinked transfers. After deleting transactions infall your banking accounts prior to your target date, you can then go through your Payee list, sort it by the Uses column, and delete the Payees which show they are unused. You can do the same with Categories to get rid of old ones you no longer use. Same with Tags.