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How to find and backup my Quicken QDF file
Delores Hunt Armstrong
Member ✭✭
I have a large file (126,976 KB). Data goes back to 2006. I lost an ext hard drive last year and had to recreate a lot of information which took me about 1 year of time. I've completed that and everything is caught up.
ISSUE: Now when I try to save/back-up my file, I receive Unable to Open Source File
So I click on it, there's some spinning and eventually the file opens back to where I was, and of course no back up.
Do I need need to start a whole new Quicken file? What is my problem. I'm exhausted
ISSUE: Now when I try to save/back-up my file, I receive Unable to Open Source File
So I click on it, there's some spinning and eventually the file opens back to where I was, and of course no back up.
Do I need need to start a whole new Quicken file? What is my problem. I'm exhausted
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Answers
-also older versions as needed for testing
-Questions? Check out the Quicken Windows FAQ list
The default location for the Quicken data file is a Quicken folder under Documents.
-also older versions as needed for testing
-Questions? Check out the Quicken Windows FAQ list
If you are using OneDrive and having it backup your personal files, your Documents folder might also be in its "cloud data folder".
You don't want to drag the data file to Dropbox. You want keep the data file you open outside of any "cloud folder".
Your backups can go there, just not the one you open in Quicken.
With Quicken closed, drag the Quicken data file to another folder outside of any "cloud folder" and double click it to open it there.
To set the automatic backups to Dropbox, use:
File -> Preferences -> Backup -> Change, and browse to a folder in your Dropbox folder.
To set the manual backup location select Ctrl+B -> Change...
It can be any where on your local harddrive that you want, just follow the guidance that Chris_QPW provided above.
-also older versions as needed for testing
-Questions? Check out the Quicken Windows FAQ list
To set the automatic backups to Dropbox, use:
File -> Preferences -> Backup -> Change, and browse to a folder in your Dropbox folder. " Please advise.
Quicken backups are basically just the same as you would copying the QDF file somewhere.
Quicken has two different ways to backup the QDF file. Automatic and Manual.
The Automatic backups run after you exit Quicken and based on the number of times (I selected 1 here)
The default location these backup copies are in a folder called BACKUP where your data file is, which isn't a good location because if you lose the disk both the main copy and backup copies will be lost. So you wan to use the Change link to change it to in your Dropbox directory. It would look like this:
Note that I used "Make New Folder" to create the Quicken folder in Dropbox and then selected it, and then selected OK.
There is also the Manual backup. If you do File -> Backup and Restore -> Backup Quicken File (or much faster Ctrl+B) it will bring up this dialog.
As you can see you can change the location here (it defaults to the Desktop, which again isn't a very good place for it), and then select "Back up Now" to actually do the backup.
And from the preferences dialog above you can see that you can get Quicken to prompt you to do this backup every X times you exit Quicken.
One might wonder why have both the prompting and the automatic.
Well in the past with automatic backups you could change where they were located and as such if you wanted your backups to be somewhere other than in the same place as your QDF file you couldn't do it, and the manual backup was to only way to do it.
These days about the only difference is that the manual backups will always prompt you and then also allow for you to control the name of the file. Whereas the automatic ones don't prompt and use a default format with the date and time in the name.
One word of caution, if you use only automatic backups make sure that they are working.
By double clicking on it, not only does it open in Quicken, but if also makes that the default file it is going to open when you open Quicken again using the Quicken shortcut.
I went back and clicked off the date file extension and the warning says that the data file is in use by another cloud storage application. So I'm not going any further. I know It's saving on the Cloud, which is great. After waiting I can see that DropBox has the file saved completed.
I went back to the "data source" and clicked on it to open Quicken. I wanted to change the location back to the computer drive to have my second backup on the computer this time. I then got the " Unable to Open Source File". I closed out of Quicken remembering I probably should have opened the file with the extension/backup. I got this pop-up:
I clicked on Continue. Now I'm stumped how to fix/go forward. I can see my DropBox file is good. I'm stumped at what I've done to my computer drive file and how to proceed back to it. Sorry, I've re-read your information and I'm just nervous after the year I've had. Thank you for your patience!
Please advise. Thank you so much!!!
When I went to my data file location to open up Quicken from my DataSource file:
\dndar\Desktop\2018-2019 Files Reconfigured\Quicken\QDataFile
This is the message I received:
I believe I can click on ‘Continue’ because I have ALREADY saved in DropBox.
Plus, the data file I’m trying to open reflects the same number of KB that my BACKUP file shows in the BACKUP file… 129,391 KB.
Am I doing this correctly?
Basically, I saved into the Dropbox location this morning using the directions you provided. Then I went back, closed Quicken. I went to my datafile on my computer drive: \dndar\Desktop\2018-2019 Files Reconfigured\Quicken\QDataFile
And double-clicked on the file circled below. You can see that the file in the BACKUP folder is the same number of KBs in the snip-it below.
When I tried to open the Quicken file directly from the “Backup folder file from 9:22AM this is the pop-up rec’d. I’m guessing this is something is DO NOT want to do? Am I on the right track at this point? Thank you!