Old Account Records

The best way to immediately access old records is do nothing - keep it all in one file.

What problems are there by leaving it? What advantage is gained by the "cut off"? I have data from 1995 - all in my working file I suspect there are other more seasoned users who have even more history. "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it!" Jim M.

I've always wanted to write-lock data older than a year. That prevents the occasional slip that puts a transaction back in 1986 and screws up everything since! It is very useful to have old records available and searchable, but you almost never want to change them.

Jim M. wrote:

Quicken will let you do that.

File > Passwords > Transaction

Enter the password you want and the date you want to be protected through. Whenever you try to add/modify/delete a transaction earlier than that date, you will be required to enter the password.

Obviously you will have to do some regular maintenance on the date to make sure it covers the appropriate transactions.

There is also the feature whare you can select for Quicken to warn you if the date you are posting to is more than a year away from the current date. Not as secure as your suggestion, but still handy for entering wrong dates.

Thanks, John. That is good news. --Bill

John Pollard wrote:

I viewed the problem as "old accounts", not old records. Thus I try not to create accounts: if we change to a new VISA carrier, the same Quicken VISA account is used, for example. If I have an account that becomes inactive, a doctor that we no longer use for example, I move all transactions for that account into a corresponding history account ("general medical" for doctors, etc) (it helps if you are obsessive/compulsive, but you can get quite speedy at this). So I have immediate access to old records without the clutter of old accounts.

dick w - a Quicken 1994 user.... more than 11 years ....