Re: Quicken file size - should I reduce?

On 07/18/24 9:31 AM, JohnSmith wrote:

> My quicken data file is 118Meg.  Quicken is also starting to run a little
> slow (Via satallite internet).  I'm thinking about reducing the filesize
> to speed things up.  Any thought on 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.

[Quicken only pulls data into the program when it is needed. So, for 
example, a user can have a huge Quicken data file, if the user has lots 
of attachments. But attachments have no affect on Quicken response time 
except when the user opens/views an attachment. Naturally that huge file 
will take longer to backup, and take up much more of the usually limited 
online backup space. But retaining valuable data should be more 
important than backup time. I backup to my C: drive; then have various 
Windows CMD files and other auto-backup software that copy the backups 
on my C: drive to where ever I want them to be.]

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).