Cleaning up stock price history file

Posted by jo on July 20, 2008, 11:32 am

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My price history has tons of entries that are obsolete or so frequent
that they are overkill since i update almost daily. Quicken doesn't
seem to give you any option except a entry by entry delete, which is
horrible. Is there any other way to do bulk deletes from this file?
I toyed with the idea of exporting it to a text file, deleting the
rows there, and reimporting it. Is that going to cause me any
problems?

jo

Posted by John Pollard on July 20, 2008, 1:08 pm

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jo wrote:

> My price history has tons of entries that are obsolete or so

> frequent

> that they are overkill since i update almost daily. Quicken

> doesn't

> seem to give you any option except a entry by entry delete,

> which is

> horrible. Is there any other way to do bulk deletes from this

> file?

> I toyed with the idea of exporting it to a text file, deleting

> the

> rows there, and reimporting it. Is that going to cause me any

> problems?

You have a couple of options.

1.) Quicken will allow you to delete multiple price entries at
once.

Investing > Security Detail View > (select security) > Update >
Edit Price History

You can select multiple price "records" just as you would select
multiple files in Windows Explorer, then click "Delete".

2.) You can get rid of all your current prices (rename your
Quicken price history: QDATA.QPH, where QDATA is the name of
your Quicken data), then re-acquire new prices ... from one of
several sources.

You can use Quicken's "Download Historical Prices" to get
historical prices for selected securities. "Quicken downloads
daily prices of the selected securities for the most recent
month, weekly prices for the 11 months prior to that, and
monthly prices thereafter." This approach will only get prices
up to five years old, and only for securities that Quicken is
capable of downloading; bond prices, for example, can not be
gotten this way.

You can go to other sources, such as Yahoo, and download
historical prices into a comma delimited file, and "Import" that
file into Quicken.

You can get the free application "QPH File Processor" (Google
for it), which will take prices from any QPH file (It does not
use Quicken and does not need any other member of the Quicken
data "fileset") and create a comma delimited file of those
prices. Between the QPH File Processor, your renamed Quicken
price history file, and a word-processor/editor, you can select
which securities and which prices you want to retain. [I
personally would use the QPH File Processor to get my bond
prices back ... and possibly to get prices older than 5 years
for some securities.]

--

John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
Please reply to newsgroup

Posted by jo on July 21, 2008, 12:55 pm

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> jo wrote:

> > My price history has tons of entries that are obsolete or so

> > frequent

> > that they are overkill since i update almost daily. =A0Quicken

> > doesn't

> > seem to give you any option except a entry by entry delete,

> > which is

> > horrible. Is there any other way to do bulk deletes from this

> > file?

> > I toyed with the idea of exporting it to a text file, deleting

> > the

> > rows there, and reimporting it. =A0Is that going to cause me any

> > problems?

> You have a couple of options.

> 1.) Quicken will allow you to delete multiple price entries at

> once.

> Investing > Security Detail View > (select security) > Update >

> Edit Price History

> You can select multiple price "records" just as you would select

> multiple files in Windows Explorer, then click "Delete".

> 2.) =A0You can get rid of all your current prices (rename your

> Quicken price history: QDATA.QPH, where QDATA is the name of

> your Quicken data), then re-acquire new prices ... from one of

> several sources.

> You can use Quicken's "Download Historical Prices" to get

> historical prices for selected securities. =A0"Quicken downloads

> daily prices of the selected securities for the most recent

> month, weekly prices for the 11 months prior to that, and

> monthly prices thereafter." =A0This approach will only get prices

> up to five years old, and only for securities that Quicken is

> capable of downloading; bond prices, for example, can not be

> gotten this way.

> You can go to other sources, such as Yahoo, and download

> historical prices into a comma delimited file, and "Import" that

> file into Quicken.

> You can get the free application "QPH File Processor" (Google

> for it), which will take prices from any QPH file (It does not

> use Quicken and does not need any other member of the Quicken

> data "fileset") and create a comma delimited file of those

> prices. =A0Between the QPH File Processor, your renamed Quicken

> price history file, and a word-processor/editor, you can select

> which securities and which prices you want to retain. =A0[I

> personally would use the QPH File Processor to get my bond

> prices back ... and possibly to get prices older than 5 years

> for some securities.]

> --

> John Pollard

> First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com

> Please reply to newsgroup

Thanks, John. I had forgotten that I actually could delete more than
one entry in the price history file at at time, but it still is very
time consuming for many securities and time periods. Think I'll try
one fo your other suggestions.

jo