Idle Time Clean-Up

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Faroe47
Faroe47 Member ✭✭✭
in Registers & Transactions (Windows)
I have years of transactions and many old accounts in my current file. Without jeopardizing the stability of my application, how do I go about starting to clean up my Quicken R25.21. I'm sure that removing or deleting old accounts no longer used for analysis would speed things up and take up less space. Where do I start (besides making a backup copy)? I really only need the last few years' worth of transactions in any account in order to analyze spending, etc. Thanks.
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  • Valderi
    Valderi Member ✭✭✭✭
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    Try to "create a Year End Copy" in "Files" then "File operations".
    Choose: "I only want transactions in my current data file starting with this date: YYYYMMDD" 
    In your new file, if you want to delete your old accounts, right click on the name of one account, go to "display options" tab. At the bottom left, you can delete this account. but I would prefere to "Close Account" instead.

    You can also reverse this process by "Closing Account" first in your old file, than "Create a Year End Copy".
    Hope it helps.
  • Faroe47
    Faroe47 Member ✭✭✭
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    Right. I've done Year End Copy before, but a long time ago. I would think you'd want to close the old accounts first, so that you don't pick up any unnecessary data when you make the copy. But I have bank and brokerage accounts from a decade or more ago. Although I know Deleting an account is final, I could at least go back to a copy should I ever need to research.
  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited April 2020
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    Doesn't really do anything for Quicken -
    BUT... its like tossing out old file folders of information from the Quicken filing cabinet.  What about.... cost basis for investments, transfers between accounts, where spending happened....
    I've never understood how or why anyone would use the Year End Copy to DELETE information.... when you probably have years worth of paper files - I know I do -

    QWin - R54.16 - Win10

  • Faroe47
    Faroe47 Member ✭✭✭
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    I gave up long ago trying to track my investments via Q. I would like to maintain info on transfers and what I spent money on, but if it's more than two or three years back, it wouldn't really matter. My personal situation changed drastically in 2016, so there's no reason to go beyond that.
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
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    Well other than disk space you might find that you have saved nothing.

    Quicken doesn't load accounts until you access them.  As such if you have a long dormant investment account it won't affect the performance of Quicken with the exception of reports like the net worth that access that information.
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  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
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    P.S.

    Year end copy never removes investment transactions.  It doesn't because it would be very complicated dealing with the situation where you are still holding some of the shares of a given lot, but not others.

    In the non investment accounts the performance hardly cares about how many transactions you have, but some people have reported problems when there are a great amount of transactions in one register.  But the best fix for that would just create a new account for the latest transactions.

    I have compared a "good working" data file which has data back to 1996 with a brand new one.  And about the only thing different I have every noticed is a few seconds on startup and a second or two the first time I access a large account in the current session.
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