As Andrew implied yesterday, you "Find" the transaction in the register in your *current* file and leave the backups well enough alone. Alternately, run a transaction report filtering by Account/Date/whatever-else-you-know-about-the-transaction.
Dealing with your backup files and putting them, and your current data, at risk only complicates what appears to be your goal.
HTH
-apwilhelm
This is an area that has potential to become religious (!). There are two schools of thought, each one has its adherents!
First, one school says don't ever archive or prune your fileset. (That's DIFFERENT from keeping backups!). Keep ALL your data in one fileset forever, and you can ALWAYS view historical transactions and run reports (like, "Gee, how much was that vacation we took in Cape Cod in 1998 compared to our current cost?") type of stuff immediately from your active file. Downside is your Q fileset becomes rather large over time...
Second - The other school of thought says at the end of each year, run a YEAR END and create a backup that contains transactions prior to January 1
*as well as deleting* all the 'old' transactions from the current file set. Then, your current fileset is smaller, Q might be more nimble, etc. etc. etc. The downside is that you need to copy and/or open a backup to look at old transactions. (Another downside is that you have to re-open each backup every time Q makes a new version (or once every 2 or 3 times) to let it re-format the 'old' files to the 'upleveled' format. As you get more and more of these each year, this becomes a pain in the arse)I used to be a member of #2, but I've been convinced that #1 is ok too.
We're bound to get opinions on which was is 'best'...it's been discussed here many times.
"Andrew" wrote in news:48052774$0$11643$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:
I like #1, evne though my Quicken data don't go back more than ~ 10 years.
Yeah Han - I hear you! I've become proselytized and seen the light too!
btw, Happy Tax Day to all!
"Andrew" wrote in news:48056a1c$0$25064$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:
Well, it was less happy than usual, although I am glad to report I did not provide the government with any tax-free loan. It was less than happy because my FED & NY efilings failed and I had to mail a paper return and check. Still don't understand why the error 397 kept coming back from TaxAct 3 times!
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