Mike and John - good points. Most of the time when I open 'backups', it's out of my archival zip folders, and despite what Q might do on the fly to the retrieved folders, I just don't allow them to be saved back into the archival zip and I don't save any changes.
But I do see how your points apply to those backups that remain on the drive either thru explicit backup commands or the automatic backup facility. Thanks!
Just yesterday there was an interesting corollary to this point.
A poster posted on the Quicken forums boards that she had "lost" her Quicken data file. In searching for it, she found > 200 .qdf files. She then promptly proceeeded to look through them by opening them with Quicken, trying to see which one was most recent. In doing so, she destroyed their original data/timestamps, making it virtually impossible to accurately determine the original creation date and sequence of creation.
On Tue 24 May 2005 08:30:01a, Mike B wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:
..or did you mean coronary...
Hi, Laura.
I've read the thread to date and see that you have all the help you need. I'd like to comment on one paragraph of this post, so I've SNIPped the rest of it:
First, what Quicken calls "a file" is actually a set of several files, so in this newsgroup, we often refer to the set of files as a Quicken "fileset". The exact components of the fileset vary, depending mostly on the Quicken version and how you've used Quicken, as the others have said. All of the files have the same filename (QDATA, by default) plus a 3-letter extension. QDATA.QDF (QDF is for Quicken Data File, I suppose) is the main file; clicking on this filename will start Quicken with the QDATA fileset loaded, including any files with other extensions as needed.
Quicken's automatic backup function works basically like this. Each week, Q automatically backs up your fileset into a folder that Q creates after the first week you use Q. This is a subfolder within the Quicken folder and is automatically named BACKUP. The first time Q backs up your fileset, it adds the numeral "1" to the filename of each file in the set, so QDATA.QDF becomes C:\Quicken\BACKUP\QDATA1.QDF, QDATA.QEL becomes QDATA1.QEL, etc.
The second week, Q first renames QDATA1.* to QDATA2.*, and then it backs up your current fileset as QDATA1.*. The next week, QDATA2 becomes QDATA3...and so on through the 5th week, when QDATA4 becomes QDATA5. The sixth week, QDATA5 is deleted before QDATA4 is renamed QDATA5. So, after 5 weeks you always have 5 sets of backups, numbered 1 through 5, with 1 being the most recent. You can look in the BACKUP folder and check the file dates to verify this.
You have limited control over this process. Click Edit | Preferences | Quicken Program, then Backup under Setup. The second box lets you change the number of backups from 5 if you like. The other box there, "Remind after running Quicken ___ times", does not refer to this automatic backup process; it controls how often Q reminds you to make a manual backup to some location OTHER than Quicken\BACKUP, in addition to the automatic backups.
As John Pollard says, it's not a good idea to have a Q filename ending in a digit; that just invites confusion when Quicken adds a digit. And it's not good to have a filename longer than 7 characters, because the digit Q adds will cause Windows to rename it to comply with the 8.3 filename rules; LauraData.QDF might become LauraD~1.QDF. :>( While these names are perfectly valid and won't cause any problems for the computer, they will confuse humans who are trying to sing along. Yes, I've been there; done that! It's NOT fun! :>(
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