Dealing with Multiple backups

Hi, PT.

I think you're confusing me with your use of the words "account" and "file". These words do not always mean the same thing in Quicken-speak as in accountant-speak - or in everyday conversation.

I THINK you mean you have 3 Quicken FILES - each of which is actually a fileset of several related files. (Let's call them Pers.qdf, Corp.qdf and IRA.qdf, OK?) Within each file, you have at least one and probably several ACCOUNTS. In Pers.qdf, for example, there would be your personal checking account, maybe a savings account, perhaps accounts for a home, a car - and offsetting liability accounts. Corp.qdf would have the company's checking account, plus maybe equipment and other asset accounts. IRA.qdf would have accounts for your retirement assets.

Is that what you meant? If you really meant 3 accounts, then they might all be included within a single PT.qdf file.

How did you select between Pers, Corp and IRA before you "screwed it up, and decided to restore a previous backup"?

If you really had 3 filesets, then you should have 3 backup sets, and each could be restored individually. Once each file is restored and re-saved as a .qdf file, you should be able to launch Quicken with THAT file loaded by browsing in Windows Explorer to the particular .qdf file and double-clicking on it. And you could create a separate shortcut on your desktop for each .qdf file.

Fill in some of the details for us and we should be able to give you more specific guidance. Be clear as to whether you mean "accounts" or "files" - in Quicken-speak.

RC

Sorry for the confusion. These are .QDF files. So for example the Windows folder display shows the following three files:

PERS.QDF PERS20090620.QDF PERS200906201QDF

The correct file is the last.

I also have on the display two corporation files:

CORP.QDF CORP_20090620.QDF

These two produce identical results.

But in either case I'd like to put the other two to bed, so to speak, so that, as previously when I start up QB, it opens directly either to the correct personal or corporate file, depending on which I used last.

Hi, PT.

Thanks for the clarification.

Never use a backup file as your working file. Restore PERS200906201QDF from backup, verify that it is your most-current version, and then save it as PERS.QDF. Since your CORP file is identical to its backup, just load CORP.QDF, verify that it is current, and then Exit Quicken. The next time you start Quicken, it should automatically load your CORP file. On Quicken's File menu, your PERS.QDF file should be listed; if you click that, it should - after confirming that's what you want - load PERS, replacing CORP. If you then Exit Quicken with PERS as the current file, it should be the default next time you start Quicken.

I haven't used Q2007 in a couple of years, but I believe this behavior has been unchanged for several versions now.

RC

OK, but I still have a few questions.

1. Previously, when I opened QKN, it would open to the last file I had worken on.

Now, it always presents the question I described in the first message.

1. I manually removed the PERS files, since the active files are now PERS_200906201.QDF. Then I try to rename PERS_200906201.QDF using File Operations | Rename

I enter PERS_200906201.QDF in the "File Name" box, and PERS in the "New Name" box.

I get the following message: "Could not find the file PERS_200906201"

Hi, PT.

HOW are you Exiting Quicken? And then, HOW are you launching it again? In Quicken, what do you see when you click File and look at the list just above Exit? You should see the list of your most recently used Quicken files, and both PERS and CORP should be in that list. Click CORP, let it load, and then close Quicken. Now start Quicken again. That CORP file should be loaded automatically. Now click PERS, let it load, and repeat. Now PERS should be #1 on that list and CORP should be #2. Is that what you see?

In my case, I have only my one RC.qdf, so I don't have much experience with multiple filesets. Generally, when I'm finished with a session, I first do one more manual backup (Ctrl+B) to my QBAK folder. Then I just click the X in the red corner. To restart, I click the Quicken icon in my Quick Launch and it starts, with my RC.qdf file loaded. RC.qdf is #1 on my MRU list. In fact, it's the ONLY one one that list. My several backups are not shown there at all.

Another way to start Quicken with my file loaded, of course, is to right-click on Program Files\Quicken\RC.qdf and choose to Open with... Quicken, or to Create a Shortcut on my Desktop. That hasn't been necessary for me, but either way should work.

In the Backup dialog, I never use the "add the date to the filename" option. And, of course, there is not even an option to change the name of the current file there, except to add the date. The only option is to put the current file, with the current filename, into a different folder - perhaps on a USB flash drive or another hard drive.

There is a subtle but important difference between a backup and an archive. In my mind, a backup is needed only for a short time. It's hard for me to imagine a time when I would need or want to reload my July 1994 backup, just to think up a wild date for example. I'm not likely ever to need my July 7,

An archive is something else; I MIGHT have occasion to reload my 2007 TurboTax file some day, so there are multiple copies of that both on and off the computer hard drive. In fact, I still have the original TurboTax media for each year back to about 1990 or so, along with the data files for those years. (All I have to do is find them and see if they will run on today's computer.) Yes, I'm a confirmed packrat.

RC

Can you clarify how you entered "PERS_200906201.QDF in the 'File Name' box"? Did you manually key the name? Was the name not visible in the browse list above the "File Name" box?

..

Interesting distinction. I have been using the "add date" option on backups, and now I get a window on start up that complains that Quicken can only display 50 files. I'd like to get rid of that popup, but am unclear on how best to do this. Ideas?

Thanks for all the help.

Answers to posed questions:

1. I've tried exiting Quicken using File | Exit, and by clicking the X in the URH Corner of the screen. I've always opened Quicken from the icon (which opens C:\Program Files\Quicken\qw.exe)

1. On some occasions, Quicken opens to the last file I had used. In other cases I get the "choose your file" message in my original post.

2. How I got the PERS_200906201.QDF file? I restored a backup of that date, because I had made some errors in late June entries to the PERS file

1. Renaming Problem I tried entering PERS_200906201.QDF, in the File Name box and PERS.QDF in the new name box I get the message "Could not find the file PERS_200906201"

I also tried entering PERS_200906201, in the File Name box and PERS in the new name box I get the same message "Could not find the file PERS_200906201"

So at this point I have two wishes:

1. Get rid of the "Get Started with Quicken 2007 - What do you want to do?" screen and simply open Quicken
2. Rename the PERS_200906201 files (QDF, QDB, QDT) to the corresponding PERS files.

I suppose I can live with things as is, but I hope that I haven't done any serious damage to my file structure.

PT

Another way to get quicken to open with a specified file is to add the file to the Quicken Icon properties. In fact you can have a desktop icon for every Q file and name the icon as desired.

Just add a space and then the file name in the properties section after the "C:\Program Files\QUICKENW\qw.exe"

A Quicken Icon named MyFiles could have the following entry in "Properties": C:\Program Files\QUICKENW\qw.exe" MyFile.qdf

Eric

If the file you want to rename (PERS_200906201.QDF) is not visible in the browse window above the rename "File Name" box; you can not simply key that file name in the "File Name" box ... you would need to precede the file name with the full Windows path to the file ... or Quicken will not be able to "find" the file.

It has been a while since I used 2007 but I think there should be a box labeled "don't show me this" (or something like that). Check that box and you should not get that screen anymore.

When you do the file>>File Operations>>rename you need to navigate to the folder that contains the PERS_200906201 file so that you can actually select the file. You might need to do a windows search to find the exact location of that file. Then you can select the file and finish the rename operation.

Hi, Pt.

DO NOT do this. With rare exceptions, always let Quicken handle your Quicken files. It will automatically know which files are part of the fileset and will change all of them as necessary when you tell it to change the .qdf file. This applies to Copy, Move, Delete, Rename, Backup, Restore from backup... Any of the tasks that could be done with Windows Explorer or some other Windows tool. Start Quicken and tell it to do the job on the .qdf file and it will take care of the whole fileset - which it calls a single "Quicken file".

This is how many Quicken users get their files in a tangle. I'm not saying that you did this, but many users have done it.

Let Quicken handle Quicken files!

And, as John said, if Quicken can't find the .qdf file, that does not mean that it doesn't exist. Just that it's not where Quicken expected to find it, so you will have to browse to it, or in some other way tell Quicken where it is. And, again, once Quicken finds the .qdf file, it SHOULD find all the related files there in the same location. IF they are not there, then you have another problem.

Way back (Win2K/XP) when the Program Files folder was first introduced, Microsoft decreed that data files should not be kept in that folder, but that developers should store them in some other, user-accessible folder separate from the application itself. For example, we should no longer see a C:\Program Files\Quicken\PERS.qdf file at all. It should be in some location like C:\My Documents\Quicken\PERS.qdf. The program should never put its data in Program Files. This decree was not enforced, so many developers - including Intuit - ignored it and continued to put data into PF. So, in Vista, Microsoft changed the file structure. My Documents (and many other My... folders) disappeared or changed. Now, programs - like Quicken - cannot just write their data into PF. There is, instead, a complex virtualization process (which I haven't tried to understand) which lets the program THINK it's writing into PF, but instead is saving the data in a file under your Users account, something like: C:\Users\PT\AppData\...\PERS.qdf. The \...\ in that sentence means that I haven't bothered to locate that portion of the path. But, with this system, Quicken is happy, Microsoft is happy, and users are USUALLY happy - except when they try to find the actual data file, which they don?t need very often.

Sorry for the long paragraph with a lot of gaps in the explanation. But, as Paul Harvey used to say, "Please don't ask me for details. I've already told you MORE than I know."

RC

I'm not aware that I ever deliberately moved it there. In any case, if they don't belong n the Quicken folder, where should they go?

A good place for them would be in a folder within "My Documents".

I'm really sorry to be such a pest, but here goes:

1. Following previous suggestions, I created a new data folder "Quicken" in My Docs

1. I moved the three data files for CORP, PLAN and PERS_200906201 from the C:\Program Files \ Quicken to the folder of step 1

So now, Quicken can access the data files in the new folder without errors.

BUT - I still have two problems

1. Each time I open Quicken using the Quicken Icon, (which opens C:\ Program files\qw.exe) the program opens with the "Get Started With Quicken - What do you want to do - Open a file located on this computer".

Quicken then presents the three files in the My Docs | Quicken folder. I click on one and the program then loads normally. Whether I close by using File | Exit or clicking the X in the URH Corner, the program always starts up with the choice screen.

Previously Quicken always opened to the file I was using on the last closure. And per Quicken Help, that's what it's supposed to do

That choice doesn't appear

Rename the PERS_200906201 files (QDF, QDB, QDT) to the corresponding

1. When I try to rename the long PERS_200906201 File to simply PERS, using File operations | Rename, I get the message "Could Not find the file PERS_200606201"

With Quicken closed, search for the quser.ini file and open it using Notepad.exe. Check that the paths for the files listed here are now pointing to the new location. This might help sort out your file open problems.

When you try this step you need to navigate to the My Docs folder containing that file. You will see the file in the box so that you can select it. Once you select the file then you can rename it.