Backups question

Hi, Willie.

Are you defining "account" the same way that Quicken does?

In my Quicken "file" I have multiple bank accounts. I also have several investment accounts and credit card accounts. There are several ways I can see a list of all these: +A, or click Tools | Account List, or click the Accts icon on the Toolbar. When I use +B - or click Backup on the Toolbar - Quicken backs up ALL of these accounts into my one backup file. On the rare occasions when I want to back up or copy only a single Account, I use File | File operations | File Export | QIF File.

As you said, until the 2010 version of Quicken, what Intuit called "a file" was actually a collection of related files, including those with extensions like .qdf, .qel, .qtx and others. For those older Quicken versions, yes, we do/did need all those related files. (Everyone except Quicken called each of those - QDATA.QDF, QDATA.QEL, etc. - a separate file; only Quicken referred to the entire set of files as "a file".)

For Quicken 2011, Intuit has combined all those related files into one larger single file with the .qdf extension, so there should be no new .qel or .qif files. But they also started a more-complex way of naming Quicken's backup files.

When you press +B now, you should see the Quicken Backup window. This looks a lot like the one we've seen for years, but there are some easily-overlooked differences. The current filename (QDATA.QDF) is shown, along with the default Backup file name, "QDATA.QDF-backup". Then there is a checkbox to "Add date to backup file name". Many users choose this, but I don't, so I leave the box unchecked; each of my successive "manual" backups overwrites the latest previous one. Quicken adds the date and time to its own automatic backups anyhow: QDATA-2011-10-27.PM02.31.QDF-backup, for example.

The next section of the backup window tells WHERE Quicken should put these "manual" backups; this is where we can choose to put them on a thumb drive, CDRW or other location.

We often discuss backups in this newsgroup. Quicken provides for 3 kinds of backup:

1. Automatic - formerly once a week, now after running Quicken so many times, into the BACKUP subfolder under the folder that holds the working .qdf file.
2. Manual - as discussed above, using +B or the Backup icon, into whichever location(s) we choose.
3. Reminded - same as Manual, but in response to a reminder from Quicken; we can set the frequency of the reminder.

At Edit | Preferences | Backup, we can set the frequency for the 1st and 3rd kinds of backup.

There is a difference between "backup" and "archive". An archive is a permanent record that we may need a year or 10 years or longer from now. A backup is a safety measure to assure us that we will have a fallback record in case we lose our original or later discover an error and need a starting point before that error occurred. In my view, we seldom need more than ONE backup - so long as it is a good one, of course. It's hard for me to think that I might still need a backup of my Quicken file from last October, for example, even though I might want to print out my 12/31/10 or 12/31/2000 balances from my archives.

My current working .qdf file goes back to 1990, when I started using Quicken. If I want to see my 12/31/2000 balances, I can just look at those in my current .qdf file - and print them out if I want. In less than a minute I can tell you that we bought a TV set from Wal*Mart for $302.02 on October 12, 2001. Without having to search through "a lot of old stuff". ;^} Some users worry that keeping 20 years of data in the current working file might slow Quicken to a crawl, but I - and many others here - have reported no slowdown at all.

RC

-- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken 2012 Deluxe R 3 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)

I have accumulated a lot of backup files over the years. I have them in multiple directories on multiple drives. They go back to 1996 through many versions of Quicken.

I decided it was way past time to clean house and get rid of a lot of old stuff.

Is there a good way to make a backup of all current Quicken accounts at one shot?

I have been doing backups of my main account with Cntrl - B but I realized that that only backs up the one account. Dumb I am.

I started to do an export qif file and then wondered if that would remove the data or just send a copy to the qif file.

I noticed looking through various backup directories that in some places there are various files such as qif, idx, npc, qdf,qel etc etc and I wondered if I still need those?

If so, why isn't my current Quicken making those files? I am using Quicken 2011 Deluxe.

What is the best way to backup multiple accounts in the same institution and in multiple banks?

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I was wondering if the Cntrl - B backup backed up only the file I was working on or all my files.

So it seems that if I make a new backup today using Cntrl-B and saved that in 2 or 3 different drives so I have multiple backups ( Murpy's Law was written by my computer ), that I could safely delete all the backups from previous years.

Correct?

I have plenty of room on other drives for backups but I'm trying to clean up my C drive. Backing it up takes 440 GB and I know I have a lot of old stuff I can get rid of.

I too like to keep all my data from previous years available without digging into some archive and trying / hoping it will load ok. It's good to be able to ask Quicken for info on when I bought something etc.

I have never verified my file or done that year end thing.

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I did as you, had lots of back up files, didn't know what to do with them. What I ended up doing was zip them up by year into a compressed zip file, password protected. Except for the current year, I have 6 "annual" files. I keep my back up files on my laptop and once a week, put them on a flash drive and put it away in case my laptop gets ripped off.

You could also email them to yourself into a gmail account and save them there, only if you're comfortable having them there. I didn't, but you can always encrypt them good just in case your back up measures fail.

BTW - even if you have those old "data" files, without the actual Quicken program from that "decade" - you won't be able to open them

"ps56k" wrote

"Arizona Willie" wrote

BTW - even if you have those old "data" files, without the actual Quicken program from that "decade" - you won't be able to open them

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Actually, you probably can open them ... but you might have to do it in stages.

Depending on which version of Quicken created the old data files, you can download "trial" versions of older versions of Quicken that will allow you to convert files from just about any old version of Quicken. Sometimes, you'll need to make the conversion in more than one step - such as Q5 to Q99 to Q2004 to ... (for example).