Images, use copy, then copy back to original

I would have to guess and I would guess that you would be ok if you "copy" the data fileset back to the desktop. (Quicken does not create an Attach folder if there are no attachments; and if the Quicken data contains attachments, but no Attach folder is present, Quicken does not appear to create one.)

You can test this fairly easily by backing up your desktop data including the Attach folder (Quicken automatically backs up the Attach folder if there is sufficient room on the backup media - in this case you could just backup to another folder on your hard drive) ... then copy your laptop data back to the original desktop folder and test. The worst that can happen is you lose the data you entered on the laptop (because you have to return to the "backup").

To help you "remember" in the future, there are a couple of approaches (at least) you could consider. One is to put your Quicken data in a folder all its own, then plan to copy that entire folder (which will include the Attach folder) to your laptop and back each time.

Alternatively, since Quicken backup will backup the Attach folder and Quicken restore will restore the Attach folder, you could use Backup/Restore to move your data back and forth.

A previous poster once experimented with this and reported unrecoverable loss of the linkage between attachments and the Quicken data file.

I did a very quick test before my previous post and the few attachments (only a couple of account statements) in my test file were listed and viewable. If I were doing it for real, I would do much more exhaustive testing.