May someone please explain why should I archive my Quicken at the year end? What are the benefits and the drawbacks of this action? I have about 10 years data in my Quicken file and it gets larger and larger... Thanks for your suggestions.
Unless you have performance problems, there's not much reason to archive at the year end and a lot of reasons *not* to do it (reports, for example).
It's a fact that the larger a database like Q's gets, the possibility of data corruption does exist. Also, performance can be slowed down if the machine is under powered. However, it doesn't seem to be a likely scenario. As long as you have good (and frequent) backups and validate on occasion, you should be OK. Many of us (including myself) run with more than 10 years of data and db sizes extremely large with no problems....
You piqued my interest with this "validate" concept. I never knew about it until this post. Or maybe I did.. and forgot? :) So I validated my file and it found one damaged scheduled transaction. I'm not sure what to make of it, do I care? Here's the log:
I often see people 'suggest' you Validate the file. Just to be clear here, Intuit says in their Quicken help file" "Important We recommend that you perform this procedure only if you're experiencing problems with your Quicken data and not as a regular practice. "
I only point this out because Intuit is pretty clear that you should not just wily-nelly validate on a whim, only when you have problems. Upgrading from one release to another, on 'on an occasional basis', doesn't qualify in my book as 'having a problem'. I personally read into this that Intuit thinks that this validation process can provide more harm than good if things are already ok, and shouldn't be used unless you HAVE to as they suggest.
I agree with that! Thanks to both of you for the posts. I won't be validating again any time soon. Glad you mentioned it.. but wish I knew to not do it so quickly. Thankfully it seems like nothing bad happened. Even if it did, I make a backup onto other media at least once per week. I'm really anal about making sure my Quicken data is well protected.
Read my posting... I never suggested that Validation be done "willy-nilly on a whim". I clearly stated "on occasion". Also, it's fairly standard procedure to validate a *copy* of the data, not the original. Validation tells you that there *may* be problems. It would behoove one to try and figure out what it found before it becomes a *real* problem...
If you are upgrading Q, validation becomes *very* important, IMNSHO. Upgrading a database with errors has often been the source of major upgrade problems....
I concur. Validating a copy of your Quicken fileset poses no threat at all. And if you find a problem, you may be very glad you did that before the problem got worse.
Often when corruption first starts it's effects are not noticeable to the user, but the longer it goes on, the better the chance it will get worse. That means that an increasing number of your backups will also have the corruption, which is not good; by the time you figure out you have corruption, you may not have a corruption free backup and validate does not always correct all problems.
And if you access your Quicken data over a network, I would say that regular validations are just about mandatory.
Just validated copies of my files, which go WAY back. Got 5 deletions from the QEL file for no matching register entries. Not having any luck finding a real definition of that file. Quick questions:
- anyone got a good link to Q file definitions?
- worthwhile to validate my working files to clean up QEL?
Andrew has posted what we know about each file in the Quicken fileset in this group many times. It's limited knowledge, but it's all we have as far as I know. (I believe the QEL file is largely concerned with online setups and download info ... including, I believe, info about which transactions have already been downloaded).
This is just a personal opinion: I accept all fixes that Validate does.
Thanks, John - Just validated my working files. Also quickly scanned the subjects of available posts by Andrew, but didn't see anything that looked applicable. I'll go have a look at Google. CTinFL
Newsgroups: alt.comp.software.financial.quicken From: "Andrew" - Find messages by this author Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 23:15:29 GMT Local: Tues, May 4 2004 6:15 pm Subject: Re: QDATA files without extensions - how many
John - you just KNEW it was time for me dust this off, right??
Originally from the Quicken HELP file, with modification for Q2002's QSD entry:
.QDF Contains all your transactions, a dictionary of addresses of unprinted checks, descriptions in split transactions, and all the items that Quicken memorizes for you (categories, classes, memorized transactions etc.)
.QSD Contains your custom icons, Financial Calendar notes, extra account information, and information about your loans
.QEL Contains your online services data. Appears only if you use online banking or online payment services
.QTX Contains your tax planning data. Appears only if you use the Quicken Tax Planner.
John and Hank - I really didn't mean to pick on anyone in particular (that's why I tried not to limit my original comments to anyone specifically); again, I was only pointing out something that I've read in the HELP file many times. I even think I remember (but I can't find it now) a point about not running VALIDATE unless specifically told to by an Intuit help-person. So, I certainly accept your views even if I don't neccessarily agree with them, simply by a gut feel from what I read. I'm at peace with the world.
There's a middle ground here. You can archive your data prior to say,
1/1/2006, but still leave all older data in your existing file. This way, should you end up with data corruption, you will not lose your history prior to the current year ... AND you still have all prior years' data in your current file for reporting purposes, etc.
Yes. You beat me to it. Avoiding data corruption is the real reason to archive old transactions. I wish Intuit would provide a way to write-protect transactions before a named date.
Several times I have slipped and entered a transaction but slipped on the year. So I can't reconcile and it's hard to find the misplaced transaction.
Margaret Wils> There's a middle ground here. You can archive your data prior to say,
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