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Posted by tanstafl on June 10, 2009, 5:52 am

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When I upgraded to Q06 three years ago, I wound up with the awkward
name of "QDATA1_2006032111.QDF", *.QEL etc. - a touch of carelessness
at the time. I'd rather not carry that forward to Q09. Can I safely
rename all six files in the fileset as QDATA.QDF...QEL ...QPH etc?

I suspect the answer is yes, but I suppose there's a possibility that
the names are encoded within one or more of the backup files.

----
Pete Gebel pfgebel(deletethis)@crisperiodcom
Have the best day possible - all things considered

Posted by PeterH on June 10, 2009, 6:41 am

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In Quicken 09 you can go to file > file operations > rename and do
exactly what you want to do.

Peter H

>When I upgraded to Q06 three years ago, I wound up with the awkward

>name of "QDATA1_2006032111.QDF", *.QEL etc. - a touch of carelessness

>at the time. I'd rather not carry that forward to Q09. Can I safely

>rename all six files in the fileset as QDATA.QDF...QEL ...QPH etc?

>I suspect the answer is yes, but I suppose there's a possibility that

>the names are encoded within one or more of the backup files.

>----

> Pete Gebel pfgebel(deletethis)@crisperiodcom

>Have the best day possible - all things considered

Posted by Andrew on June 10, 2009, 8:26 am

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tanstafl wrote:

> When I upgraded to Q06 three years ago, I wound up with the awkward

> name of "QDATA1_2006032111.QDF", *.QEL etc. - a touch of carelessness

> at the time. I'd rather not carry that forward to Q09. Can I safely

> rename all six files in the fileset as QDATA.QDF...QEL ...QPH etc?

> I suspect the answer is yes, but I suppose there's a possibility that

> the names are encoded within one or more of the backup files.

> ----

> Pete Gebel pfgebel(deletethis)@crisperiodcom

> Have the best day possible - all things considered

That's not carelessness, those are the files **you** had quicken create as a
backup using the 'append date' option on the backup panel. As the other
poster mentioned, you CAN change the name, but then you lose the date stamp
that you had created for it. I suspect you might have more than one set of
these appended backups in the backup folder you pointed to, so the idea of
renaming won't work past the first time since you can't have duplicate file
names in the same folder.

There's been a lot of discussion in this forum over the years on backup
strategies. Some people (like me) like having the date appended, but then
you must somehow manage the ever-growing set of Q backups if you use this
option. Others use a series of folders and rotate. You might wish to
search for these posts as to be able to formulate your own backup strategy.

(And this is DIFFERENT than the auto backups that Quicken does putting a
single digit behind the fileset name (eg: QDATA1, QDATA2, etc.)
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Regards -

- Andrew

Posted by John Pollard on June 10, 2009, 12:48 pm

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Andrew wrote:

> tanstafl wrote:

>> When I upgraded to Q06 three years ago, I wound up with the awkward

>> name of "QDATA1_2006032111.QDF", *.QEL etc. - a touch of carelessness

>> at the time. I'd rather not carry that forward to Q09. Can I safely

>> rename all six files in the fileset as QDATA.QDF...QEL ...QPH etc?

>> I suspect the answer is yes, but I suppose there's a possibility that

>> the names are encoded within one or more of the backup files.

> That's not carelessness, those are the files **you** had quicken

> create as a backup using the 'append date' option on the backup

> panel. As the other poster mentioned, you CAN change the name, but

> then you lose the date stamp that you had created for it. I suspect

> you might have more than one set of these appended backups in the

> backup folder you pointed to, so the idea of renaming won't work past

> the first time since you can't have duplicate file names in the same

> folder.

> There's been a lot of discussion in this forum over the years on

> backup strategies. Some people (like me) like having the date

> appended, but then you must somehow manage the ever-growing set of Q

> backups if you use this option. Others use a series of folders and

> rotate.

There is an additional consideration when using the appended date option
for backups: "restores".

If you are handling your files logically, you can not simply do a
"restore" to revert to a backup when the backup file name contains the
appended date. The file that was originally backed up with the append
date option almost certainly did not have a date appended to its name. So
a restore of a backup with the date appended will not restore to the
original file name; two additional steps are necessary: rename (or delete
the current file), and rename the restored file.

[Example: your data file name is QDATA; you create a backup with date
appended, whose name becomes QDATA_20090601. Assuming for this example,
you put your backup in a different folder (not doing so can cause another
problem later); when restore QDATA_20090601 from the backup folder, you'll
get QDATA_20090601 in the current folder ... but your data file name is
QDATA. Now you need to rename QDATA, then rename QDATA_20090601. All too
many users have a problem knowing this, or remembering to do it.]

One way to have your "regular" file suddenly have a name with the date
appended is to restore the backup with the appended date, and skip the
rename/rename steps, then open the newly restored backup.

Or worse yet: skip the "restore" and "open" the backup that has the date
appended and start using that as the regular file: now your backup is gone
forever AND you have a file with a name you shouldn't want.

And after allowing the file with the appended date to become the regular
file, what happens when the user again backs up with the date appended?
They get a file with two dates appended. There are people who have a file
with so many dates appended to its name, that Quicken can no longer back
it up.

--

John Pollard

Posted by R. C. White on June 10, 2009, 9:09 am

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Hi, Pete.

Do NOT Rename the six files in the fileset individually. Remember that
Quicken incorrectly refers to the full fileset as "a file" and most of
Quicken's file operations deal automatically with the full set. So, after
making sure you have adequate backups, just start Quicken and click File |
File operations | Rename, select the QDF file QDATA1_2006032111.QDF, enter
the new name QDATA, and click OK. All the files in the fileset should be
renamed - even if there are a couple that you might not recognize as members
of the set. Letting Quicken do the Renaming also lets it update any
internal pointers that may be affected by the name change.

You can use Quicken's default "QDATA", of course, but then you may not be
sure of which files are real and which are samples, not just today but next
year and the year after when you update to newer versions of Quicken. Why
not use "Pete" - or some other nice short name that is meaningful to you.
Make it no longer than 6 characters (to leave room for Quicken to add a
numeral when it does its automatic backups every week), and be sure the
final character is not a numeral (which just invites confusion when Quicken
adds its backup number).

Backups are a separate subject that we've discussed here many times.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Using Quicken Deluxe 2009 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)

> When I upgraded to Q06 three years ago, I wound up with the awkward

> name of "QDATA1_2006032111.QDF", *.QEL etc. - a touch of carelessness

> at the time. I'd rather not carry that forward to Q09. Can I safely

> rename all six files in the fileset as QDATA.QDF...QEL ...QPH etc?

> I suspect the answer is yes, but I suppose there's a possibility that

> the names are encoded within one or more of the backup files.

> ----

> Pete Gebel pfgebel(deletethis)@crisperiodcom

> Have the best day possible - all things considered