I've been keeping track of my mother's brokerage account in Quicken. She's now gotten her own copy of Quicken (2005 Home and Business, just like my own) and I'd like to "split off" a copy of her brokerage account from my personal Quicken File and set up a new Quicken file for her that she could use to track her own portfolio on her own computer. What's the easiest way to do that?
Create two copies. From the first delete all your accounts, leaving just hers. Give that to her. You can then delete her account from your master. Keep the second copy, just in case.
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way to do that?
I tried what you suggested. I copied the whole Quicken file (actually 4 "sub"-files) to a new Quicken file for my mother, then went into that file and deleted all the other accounts that were not hers, one by one, until I was left with just her one account. Then I exited Quicken. But when I looked at the size of this new Quicken file, it's actually the same size as the old file! Considering all the other acccounts that were "pruned away", shouldn't this new Quicken file (consisting of the 4 sub-files) be a lot smaller? There's got to be something wrong here. I should end up with a much smaller file! There must be a cleaner, more efficient way of doing this that yields a much smaller file (that could be emailed to my mom so she could easily put it in her computer.) Any help? =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Garret Swayne garret at garretswayne dot com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Do a copy operation on the new file: File > File Operations > Copy
Compare the original and the copy - you should see a noticeable reduction in size.
Not an expert in this area but it is my understanding that the delete operations do not actually remove info from the database - it only removes links. The copy opration then cleans out these 'orphans'.
Thanks JM for your response. Well I tried what you suggested, and that reduced the size of the QDF file from 16 MB to about 8 MB. The QEL file was reduded to 159 KB from 377 KB, a savings of maybe 218 KB. But the IDX file remained around 81 KB, and most significantly, the QPH file remains the same at 7.7 MB! That means I'd still have to email my mother 16 MB of data files for her to start tracking her account. Really, there were not that many transactions in that account, that it should take up 16 MB! Any other ideas? (Aside from starting from scratch with a blank Quicken file and hand entering each transaction in the account.) I really appreciate your help...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Garret Swayne garret at garretswayne dot com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It's not going to get much smaller; and 16mb is tiny these days.
You do not need to be concerned about the idx file, you don't need to send it. And deleting accounts will never have any effect on the qph file; that contains only your investment price history. If you're not sending any investment accounts, you can leave that file out too. (You could leave it out anyway, if it does not contain any prices that can't be recovered by an historical price download.)
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