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In Quicken 09 you can go to file > file operations > rename and do exactly what you want to do.

Peter H

That's not carelessness, those are the files **you** had quicken create as a backup using the 'append date' option on the backup panel. As the other poster mentioned, you CAN change the name, but then you lose the date stamp that you had created for it. I suspect you might have more than one set of these appended backups in the backup folder you pointed to, so the idea of renaming won't work past the first time since you can't have duplicate file names in the same folder.

There's been a lot of discussion in this forum over the years on backup strategies. Some people (like me) like having the date appended, but then you must somehow manage the ever-growing set of Q backups if you use this option. Others use a series of folders and rotate. You might wish to search for these posts as to be able to formulate your own backup strategy.

(And this is DIFFERENT than the auto backups that Quicken does putting a single digit behind the fileset name (eg: QDATA1, QDATA2, etc.)

Hi, Pete.

Do NOT Rename the six files in the fileset individually. Remember that Quicken incorrectly refers to the full fileset as "a file" and most of Quicken's file operations deal automatically with the full set. So, after making sure you have adequate backups, just start Quicken and click File | File operations | Rename, select the QDF file QDATA1_2006032111.QDF, enter the new name QDATA, and click OK. All the files in the fileset should be renamed - even if there are a couple that you might not recognize as members of the set. Letting Quicken do the Renaming also lets it update any internal pointers that may be affected by the name change.

You can use Quicken's default "QDATA", of course, but then you may not be sure of which files are real and which are samples, not just today but next year and the year after when you update to newer versions of Quicken. Why not use "Pete" - or some other nice short name that is meaningful to you. Make it no longer than 6 characters (to leave room for Quicken to add a numeral when it does its automatic backups every week), and be sure the final character is not a numeral (which just invites confusion when Quicken adds its backup number).

Backups are a separate subject that we've discussed here many times.

RC

There is an additional consideration when using the appended date option for backups: "restores".

If you are handling your files logically, you can not simply do a "restore" to revert to a backup when the backup file name contains the appended date. The file that was originally backed up with the append date option almost certainly did not have a date appended to its name. So a restore of a backup with the date appended will not restore to the original file name; two additional steps are necessary: rename (or delete the current file), and rename the restored file.

[Example: your data file name is QDATA; you create a backup with date appended, whose name becomes QDATA_20090601. Assuming for this example, you put your backup in a different folder (not doing so can cause another problem later); when restore QDATA_20090601 from the backup folder, you'll get QDATA_20090601 in the current folder ... but your data file name is QDATA. Now you need to rename QDATA, then rename QDATA_20090601. All too many users have a problem knowing this, or remembering to do it.]

One way to have your "regular" file suddenly have a name with the date appended is to restore the backup with the appended date, and skip the rename/rename steps, then open the newly restored backup.

Or worse yet: skip the "restore" and "open" the backup that has the date appended and start using that as the regular file: now your backup is gone forever AND you have a file with a name you shouldn't want.

And after allowing the file with the appended date to become the regular file, what happens when the user again backs up with the date appended? They get a file with two dates appended. There are people who have a file with so many dates appended to its name, that Quicken can no longer back it up.

I'd like to thank the four of you for the very helpful comments. After a couple unrelated misadventures, I did get '09 installed and it seems to be running fine with nicely shortened file names. Now to figure out what's different, better & worse :-)

Hi, Pete.

Congratulations! And thanks for the feedback.

RC