Quicken file size - should I reduce?

I recommend against the typical approach to reduce the size of your file; namely "Archiving" data.

Your existing file is not that large - mine is 343mb and I have no meaningful response time problems.

Quicken file size plays virtually no part in Quicken response time. And I don't see how your Quicken file size coupled with your internet connection speed could meaningfully affect anything except online-backups.

Deleting Quicken data will leave you with less useful information, and it is nearly impossible to merge archived Quicken data back with the data from which it was archived - so you permanently lose the ability to have Quicken compare older data to newer data; and it becomes much more difficult to search your Quicken data once it resides in 2 or more files.

There are a couple of things you can do that MIGHT improve Quicken response time, without giving up access to any historical Quicken data.

One of the slowest Quicken activities is processing investment data. Two times that can happen is when you open a Home tab that displays any widgets containing investment data, and when you process data in investment accounts.

If Quicken opens to a Home tab widget that includes any investment data, that can increase the time it takes for the user to gain operational access to Quicken. That delay can be avoided by choosing a different display (a display that does not include investment data) when Quicken opens.

The newer releases of Quicken include the ability to "archive" investment transactions. But in this context, "archive" does not mean removing the investment data from the file: Quicken allows the user to "move" ("archive") investment transactions from one Quicken account to another. So if you have a lot of old investment transactions in a Quicken account, you can move them to another account to, hopefully, speed up processing (of that account).

As to file size per se, you can sometimes reduce the file size somewhat without losing any data.

You can make a Quicken Copy (File > Copy or Backup file > Create a copy or template. That process will remove any data in the file that was "logically deleted". Typically, when you tell software to delete data in a data base, the actual data remains but is marked as deleted: the deleted data continues to take up space in the file, but the software knows to treat that data as if it were not present.

In most cases the Quicken "Copy" is smaller (by some unpredictable amount) than the original - but on occasion, the opposite has happened.

And there is one, temporary, drawback to making a Quicken Copy of your data: the Copy will have NO accounts activated for downloading. The user must re-activate all accounts in the Copied file (I recommend the "Add Account" process for this).

I recommend against the typical approach to reduce the size of your file; namely "Archiving" data.

Your existing file is not that large - mine is 343mb and I have no meaningful response time problems.

Quicken file size plays virtually no part in Quicken response time. And I don't see how your Quicken file size coupled with your internet connection speed could meaningfully affect anything except online-backups.

Deleting Quicken data will leave you with less useful information, and it is nearly impossible to merge archived Quicken data back with the data from which it was archived - so you permanently lose the ability to have Quicken compare older data to newer data; and it becomes much more difficult to search your Quicken data once it resides in 2 or more files.

There are a couple of things you can do that MIGHT improve Quicken response time, without giving up access to any historical Quicken data.

One of the slowest Quicken activities is processing investment data. Two times that can happen is when you open a Home tab that displays any widgets containing investment data, and when you process data in investment accounts.

If Quicken opens to a Home tab widget that includes any investment data, that can increase the time it takes for the user to gain operational access to Quicken. That delay can be avoided by choosing a different display (a display that does not include investment data) when Quicken opens.

The newer releases of Quicken include the ability to "archive" investment transactions. But in this context, "archive" does not mean removing the investment data from the file: Quicken allows the user to "move" ("archive") investment transactions from one Quicken account to another. So if you have a lot of old investment transactions in a Quicken account, you can move them to another account to, hopefully, speed up processing (of that account).

As to file size per se, you can sometimes reduce the file size somewhat without losing any data.

You can make a Quicken Copy (File > Copy or Backup file > Create a copy or template. That process will remove any data in the file that was "logically deleted". Typically, when you tell software to delete data in a data base, the actual data remains but is marked as deleted: the deleted data continues to take up space in the file, but the software knows to treat that data as if it were not present.

In most cases the Quicken "Copy" is smaller (by some unpredictable amount) than the original - but on occasion, the opposite has happened.

And there is one, temporary, drawback to making a Quicken Copy of your data: the Copy will have NO accounts activated for downloading. The user must re-activate all accounts in the Copied file (I recommend the "Add Account" process for this).

My Qdata file is 185Mb and runs fine.

John Pollard said

Thanks for comprehensive response John, it's greatly appreciated. I think for the time being I'll just live with the odd delays.

Along these lines, are you sure Quicken does not ping sites repeatedly as it starts to download data? I expected the <slow satellite> ping rate to perhaps be a delay factor. Some of the delay seem to occur when simply starting a OSU.

JS

I have no insights into whether Quicken pings anything - when downloading or otherwise.

But the size of your Quicken file doesn't have anything to do with downloading times.

However there now can be as many as 4 software entities involved in OSU downloads:

- the financial institution

- Intuit servers

- Quicken servers

- Quicken on your PC (qw.exe)

Those entities can be involved in the initial request to download to Quicken; and in the resulting data download (usually initiated by the financial institution - except for some "Express Web Connect downloads, where Intuit screen scrapes data from the financial institution web site).

In other words a download request/response may pass through Intuit and Quicken servers going upstream (the request) and coming back downstream (the response).

I doubt there is much you can do to improve download times.

If you're concern is just having to sit and wait for a download to complete, you could use Tools > Schedule Updates to schedule your updates to run when you're doing something else.

John Pollard said

Thanks again John

Hi all,

Having tried the archive operation one time many decades ago, I can say that I agree with everything in John's post. There are many downsides to archiving and negligible benefits. I will add that it used to be common practice to put the default Quicken File in "My Documents" area which used to be a local file area. Today, it is not uncommon on newer Windows PCs (eg running Windows 11) to place "My Documents" in the cloud (One Drive). This can cause slower startups and exits of Quicken depending on whether the system needs to access the cloud or the cache is good enough. BTW, my Quicken file is 1.13 GB so you guys are working on relatively tiny files :-)

John

I recommend against the typical approach to reduce the size of your file; namely "Archiving" data.

Your existing file is not that large - mine is 343mb and I have no meaningful response time problems.

Quicken file size plays virtually no part in Quicken response time. And I don't see how your Quicken file size coupled with your internet connection speed could meaningfully affect anything except online-backups.

Deleting Quicken data will leave you with less useful information, and it is nearly impossible to merge archived Quicken data back with the data from which it was archived - so you permanently lose the ability to have Quicken compare older data to newer data; and it becomes much more difficult to search your Quicken data once it resides in 2 or more files.

There are a couple of things you can do that MIGHT improve Quicken response time, without giving up access to any historical Quicken data.

One of the slowest Quicken activities is processing investment data. Two times that can happen is when you open a Home tab that displays any widgets containing investment data, and when you process data in investment accounts.

If Quicken opens to a Home tab widget that includes any investment data, that can increase the time it takes for the user to gain operational access to Quicken. That delay can be avoided by choosing a different display (a display that does not include investment data) when Quicken opens.

The newer releases of Quicken include the ability to "archive" investment transactions. But in this context, "archive" does not mean removing the investment data from the file: Quicken allows the user to "move" ("archive") investment transactions from one Quicken account to another. So if you have a lot of old investment transactions in a Quicken account, you can move them to another account to, hopefully, speed up processing (of that account).

As to file size per se, you can sometimes reduce the file size somewhat without losing any data.

You can make a Quicken Copy (File > Copy or Backup file > Create a copy or template. That process will remove any data in the file that was "logically deleted". Typically, when you tell software to delete data in a data base, the actual data remains but is marked as deleted: the deleted data continues to take up space in the file, but the software knows to treat that data as if it were not present.

In most cases the Quicken "Copy" is smaller (by some unpredictable amount) than the original - but on occasion, the opposite has happened.

And there is one, temporary, drawback to making a Quicken Copy of your data: the Copy will have NO accounts activated for downloading. The user must re-activate all accounts in the Copied file (I recommend the "Add Account" process for this).

JohnSmith said

It appears the slowness I'm experiencing is due to Satellite internet.

When I utilize my phone as a hotspot (for my PC) Quicken runs quite a bit faster. I figure it's due to the looong ping times I experience when using the satellite. (650ms on sat verses 41ms on phone hotspot. <gasp> :-)

You may wish to consider switching to Starlink. Median latency is 60ms right now, with plans to cut that to 30ms or less.

Arthur Conan Doyle said

Very interesting. Do you have any experience with Startlink?

(This must be why ViaSat just drastically cut their costs. Finally some competition!)

I miss the old days of USENET. Much better platform for information than forums, Facebutt, etc. :-)

Almost certainly. I think Starlink are running a sale on the receiver now also. I have fiber optic service, so I don't need Starlink, but I haven't heard any negative reviews.