Trimming Down My Quicken Data File, Part II (2025 Update)

I think the key phrase here is "If you really want to do it..."

My main Quicken 2008 H&B file is 26MB, with tens of thousands of transactions, > 100 accounts.

If *I* were to embark on such a project, I'd probably do a copy of the whole file first, then try to trim the copy.

Bob

The above quote is from a June 2007 post above-named (I no longer see the option of how to "reply to post"- I only see reply to author- that's why I started a new thread). I'm in Q2007 H&B. I'm trying to reduce MyFile size by trimming off 2006 bank account transactions (I have 5 very active bank accounts). When I follow above instructions (after validation), my system starts the copy process but halfway completely crashes with an "error code 7160." What's shocking is that a google search produces absolutely NO HITS. Can I be the only one in the history of Google who has asked about this error ? PS: How to resolve these crashes ? Thanks much in advance. B

OK, thanks for response: You know I upgraded from Q2005 H&B about a year ago, and I am amazed at the glitch factor in this 2007 edition. . . I used to be able to print a register out-- that's impossible now. The print is microscopic and unreadable. Now, trying to make a year-end trimmed down copy-- well, I think I'm understanding that you need to (1) make a copy of MyFile, then, (2) HAND DELETE off (select transactions and hit delete key) the year you want to trim off for each account (in my case 2006) ! This is a stunning degradation in performance and quality. Both printing and year-end copying were non-problems in Q2005 H&B. What on earth has happened at Quicken (I'm aware they folded their "Zipingo" business rating service a few months ago). ??

I just may have isolated the source of crashes on trying to copy a specific date range: When I reconcile fund accounts, I have never tried to "reconcile" the Invoices and/or Bills accounts . . . I started using "Invoices" and "Bills" in the Business Center about 2 years ago. There are a few uncleared items going back all the way. And, I didn't realize that these 2 accounts are actually reconcilable: See "Reconcile Account" under the "Overview" tab, for both Invoices and Bills. In my experience, the job of trying to clear uncleared items in Invoices and Bills is a project in itself--I'll see what I can do. Brad

Brad:

I think I did not make myself clear. I was actually wondering if you had a compelling reason to "trim" your Quicken file. Many of us have HUGE files that go back decades. Mine goes back to 1986. I haven't noticed any performance degradation from having a >26MB QDF file. But, if you have your heart set on lopping off transactions, go for it.

Bob

Yes, I've read many of the posts that discuss multi-year registers. I'm a 5-year user, and not a patient man. I do notice a significantly faster start-up when I lop off years I know I'm not going to go back and look at any time soon and maybe never. 2006 has little relevance to my financial life today, especially after April 15. Sticking it in an archive folder for some remote possible future use, is much more appealing that sitting at my PC (on a daily basis) waiting the extra seconds for Q to be up and running (I'm not blessed with patience and I use Quicken daily, sometimes several times per day-- if there is an option to reduce load times on applications, even by a few seconds, I'm going to jump on it with both feet). . . BC

I've been doing this once a year since 1988...one down side is that every year I when I upgrade to the newest Q, I have to go thru each one of the (now) 19 years (and I have about 3 accounts in each year, once for me/wife and one for each kid) simply to migrate the file format to keep up with the current year. Each year that becomes more and more of a hassle. I realize I can wait and do it about once every 3 years (within the cutoff period for no longer supporting formats during migration) but a pain nether-the-less.

Hi, Brad.

"Significantly faster"? Just how big is your .qdf file, anyhow? I don't think you've mentioned a number yet. You also haven't told us anything about your hardware and operating system; maybe they have trouble keeping up with Quicken.

My 17-year-old .qdf file is over 26 MB; the whole Quicken "file" is 34 MB. From the time I click on the Quicken icon until the Cash Flow page appears is less than 4 seconds, even including the musical intro. Sometimes I close Quicken during the day, but often I just let it run in the background while I'm doing other things, like reading these newsgroups. Some applications are slow to load, but not Quicken 2008 Deluxe!

It would take me a lot of 4-second savings to offset the time I save by having my 1990s transactions at my fingertips when I need to see when I first visited a specific doctor or bought our TV set or water heater. I don't need that information every day, but I do use it often.

But it's your computer and your Quicken, so do it your way. ;^}

RC

Hi RC: I'm down the road from ya in Sunny San Antone ! My qdf file is 11 MB. I'm running XP on a Dell PC circa 2004. I have

Howdy, Neighbor.

We'll be in San Antonio for a couple of hours tomorrow. ; Now, I may be missing something,

Well, it might be:

Your system is SO weighed down with protection that it has no time to run Quicken! It's too busy running all that stuff.

Yes, I know. I used to run a lot of that, too. But now, I rely on just two protectors. The first is Vista and all the security features built into that, including the firewall and Windows Defender - on default settings.

But my most important protection is "practicing safe hex". You know the drill: Don't visit unsafe web sites; don't open attachments you're not sure about; etc. We all know them. The important part is to DO THEM! Religiously!

I certainly don't recommend that you or most users "go bare". But it has worked for me, and it gets rid of all that protection overload that would otherwise be slowing down my computer. I've been computing for 30 years last month, and I used Norton Utilities for about 15 of those years. But Symantec never updated Norton Internet Security 2005 to handle 64-bit WinXP or Vista, and the 06 version wouldn't work either, so I let my subscription expire. And I don't miss NIS at all! No more fiddling with updated definitions and automatic updates and tweaking the settings and all the other make-work that went with keeping NIS up to date. Aahh! Such a feeling of freedom! ;>

I know what you mean. Yesterday I installed Spybot. It slowed by system riiiiiiiight down. So, off it came. AMD 3500+ with 2 gig of DDR2 memory.

The best performance boost I got with Windows XP was to add another gig of RAM, and turn off the swap file. It was a noticeable difference for all applications. The other performance improvement was to move all of my data to a separate hard drive from my applications. Two 330 gig SATA drives along with an old 80 gig for temporary files really helps.

My QDF file is over 20meg, but Quicken runs very well.

I run AVG and ZoneAlarm all the time. But, I only use Ad-Aware in scan mode every month or so. CCleaner is another that I run every few months to remove anything that may have been deposited. There usually isn't much. I found another defrag tool (AusLogics Defrag Tool) that works better and faster than the Windows tool. It was free, so the price is right. I usually defrag before a full system backup to a USB hard drive. I do that every quarter. I'm considering an eSATA drive to improve the backup speed.

I've never had a virus on my computer, but I've known plenty of people who have. Afterwards, they always wished they had been more careful. When I had a hard drive failure, I wished that I had a recent backup. Now, I make sure that I do.

JimH wrote in news:OvMij.28530$Gr4.3614 @newsfe08.phx:

Supposedly, swap file helps with performance. However, fragmentation is very bad for performance. The solution is to turn the swap file (paging file) off, reboot, defrag, then reboot and then set the paging file max and min to the same number. I forgot what the rule is, something like 2 times RAM??

I have 817 mb and only one checking account that goes back five years. I do have lots of attachments to entries so that might be why mine is getting so large. I tried to prune the oldest two years off of it but it still says 817 MB. I'm using quicken 2010 and am not connected to quicken or to a bank.