My Mac is running out of storage capability. The old Quicken backups seem to be the culprit.

Is there any reason to keep the Backup files on my computer if I have the data files saved on an external hard drive?  Can I delete them all from my computer?

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Answers

  • Quicken Harold
    Quicken Harold Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    Hello Joeydun. Appreciate your question.

    If you have multiple versions of Quicken, you can remove any earlier version from your computer that you are using. If, after doing this you are still having issues with your disk space, you could move your backups to an external hard drive, but we recommend keeping the original Quicken file in which you are using on your main drive for quick access of your data.

    Hope this information is helpful.

    Respectfully,
    ~ Quicken Harold.
    Quicken Harold
    Community Moderator
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @Joeydun I first want to make sure I understand what you're saying you have. You said you have "the data files saved on an external hard drive", so I want to make sure we know what data files you're referring to. Are you referring to an external Time Machine drive which contains copies of your data files? Or  are you saying that you have multiple Quicken data files on an external drive, but Quicken's automated backups are being stored on your Mac's hard drive? How big are these data files?

    Typically, Quicken keeps only a limited number of backup files, unless you've set it to keep more. In Preferences, what is your setting for backups? 

    Is it set to "All files" or something less?

    There should be no reason to keep a massive number of Quicken backups. If you have is set to back up every time you quit, and to keep them all, you definitely should be able to weed out a lot of them. But I don't recommend deleting all your older backups, or setting the number of backups to be very low, because sometimes when you discover a problem, it's been present for a while and it can help if you can go back a week, month or more to an older data file.

    So if you do have many dozens of backup files, I'd suggest deleting many of them but keeping one or two per month for as far back as your history goes.


    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Joeydun
    Joeydun Member ✭✭
    We might be getting somewhere.  I can't locate the preference you showed above.

  • lhossus
    lhossus SuperUser, Mac Beta ✭✭✭✭✭
    macOS menu bar: Quicken menu > Preferences > General tab, then look near the bottom.


    Quicken Mac Subscription • macOS Monterey 12.6 on MacBook Pro 13" M1
  • Joeydun
    Joeydun Member ✭✭
    I have Quicken 2016.  My preferences don't look like this.
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