Quicken File Size Too Big

Posted by Ira on November 6, 2008, 11:30 pm

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Greets,

I have not split up my Quicken file in many many years because I need
cumulative reports which span many years.

My file is now over 26MB and I am currently looking at 10 second lag
following each registry entry (or matched transaction). I am assuming
that my lags are due to the size of the file.

I have read the manual and it indicates that ARCHIVING/Year End does
NOT remove the data from your file, so maybe that is not the way to
go.

Does anyone know:

1) How to reduce the size of the quicken file; and
2) If the answer to #1 will still allow me to search that data.

Thanks!

Posted by Hank Arnold (MVP) on November 7, 2008, 3:58 am

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Ira wrote:

> Greets,

> I have not split up my Quicken file in many many years because I need

> cumulative reports which span many years.

> My file is now over 26MB and I am currently looking at 10 second lag

> following each registry entry (or matched transaction). I am assuming

> that my lags are due to the size of the file.

> I have read the manual and it indicates that ARCHIVING/Year End does

> NOT remove the data from your file, so maybe that is not the way to

> go.

> Does anyone know:

> 1) How to reduce the size of the quicken file; and

> 2) If the answer to #1 will still allow me to search that data.

> Thanks!

My datastore is over 24 MB and goes back a *LOT* of years.... I really
haven't seen a performance impact. What version of Q are you running?
What is the hardware? I'm dubious that the size alone is what is
impacting you. Have you tried various techniques for cleaning up the
system? Check out what is starting up at boot time, run spyware
detectors, defrag the drive, etc...

One thing that used to work was to copy the database using the Q menus
(File/File Operations/Copy). With more recent versions of Q, I haven't
found that trick to work any more. I would copy the database, Validate
the copy and see what happens

However, you *can* limit the date range in the copied file. If it comes
to that, you could try it.....

Good luck and let us know what happens...

--

Regards,
Hank Arnold
Microsoft MVP
Windows Server - Directory Services

Posted by Ira on November 7, 2008, 10:30 am

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Hank Arnold (MVP) wrote:

> Ira wrote:

>> Greets,

>> I have not split up my Quicken file in many many years because I need

>> cumulative reports which span many years.

>> My file is now over 26MB and I am currently looking at 10 second lag

>> following each registry entry (or matched transaction). I am assuming

>> that my lags are due to the size of the file.

>> I have read the manual and it indicates that ARCHIVING/Year End does

>> NOT remove the data from your file, so maybe that is not the way to

>> go.

>> Does anyone know:

>> 1) How to reduce the size of the quicken file; and

>> 2) If the answer to #1 will still allow me to search that data.

>> Thanks!

> My datastore is over 24 MB and goes back a *LOT* of years.... I really

> haven't seen a performance impact. What version of Q are you running?

> What is the hardware? I'm dubious that the size alone is what is

> impacting you. Have you tried various techniques for cleaning up the

> system? Check out what is starting up at boot time, run spyware

> detectors, defrag the drive, etc...

> One thing that used to work was to copy the database using the Q menus

> (File/File Operations/Copy). With more recent versions of Q, I haven't

> found that trick to work any more. I would copy the database, Validate

> the copy and see what happens

> However, you *can* limit the date range in the copied file. If it comes

> to that, you could try it.....

> Good luck and let us know what happens...

I am running Q2008 (most recent SP update). System otherwise runs fine,
this is a pure quicken matter. I suspected file size because (as we all
know) quicken recalculates everything each time you enter anything (thus
the screen flicker problem). Even accepting downloading transactions
will take about 10 seconds per transaction.

I will try to supervalidate and see what happens.

Posted by John Pollard on November 7, 2008, 3:58 pm

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Ira wrote:

> I am running Q2008 (most recent SP update). System otherwise

> runs

> fine, this is a pure quicken matter.

> I suspected file size because

> (as we all know) quicken recalculates everything each time you

> enter anything

Not really. But it probably does recalculate what is visible on
your screen when you add/change/delete transactions. Maybe if
you close the Account Bar, or tell Quicken not to show amounts
on the Account Bar, you can speed things up a bit, especially
for Investment accounts.

> (thus the screen flicker problem).

I don't believe the screen flicker problem has a single cause.
There have been many reported "causes" for the screen flicker
problem; including third party software.

> Even accepting

> downloading transactions will take about 10 seconds per

> transaction.

If you're experience long delays when processing investment
account transactions, you might want to consider your Quicken
price history as a possible source of the problem. First: it
can get corrupted, and Validate will not fix that corruption.
Second: I believe as the price history file gets very large,
investment account related processing times can suffer while
Quicken finds the prices necessary for its computations.

To get a feel for any role your Quicken price history might play
in your slow processing time, BACKUP, then rename QDATA.QPH
(where QDATA is the name of your Quicken data). Next time you
start Quicken, it will build an empty price history file. Your
market values will be zero, but you can run some tests to see
what sort of response time you get. When you finish "testing",
restore your backup.

Then decide whether you want to keep your price history file; or
rename, then re-create it.

If your price history is corrupted or too large, you can
probably recover just the prices you want (with some effort).
There are several ways to get historical prices inclucing
Quicken's historical price download, recalculating Quicken
investment accounts, downloading from Yahoo and similar, and a
handy little free program called "QPH File Processor" (Google
will find it) that can extract selected prices directly from a
QPH file and create a comma delimited file that Quicken can
import.

--

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

Posted by xymptlx on February 2, 2009, 3:33 pm

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xymptlx had written this in response to
http://www.rockryno.com/quicken/Re-Quicken-File-Size-Too-Big-16106-.htm :
The problem I see with this is that I use the investment portion to track
all my cost basis, stock name changes etc. If I delete the old file, wont
it lose all of that important history, which I need to print Cost basis
reports to post to my quickbooks? I believe this investment file is the
cause as it is holding about 10 years of trades. I'm using XG 2007 and am
very hesitant to upgrade. They pretty much told me in Sales that the
flickering is the fault of my system, which is about as robust as you can
buy today.
-------------------------------------
John Pollard wrote:

> Ira wrote:

>> I am running Q2008 (most recent SP update). System otherwise

>> runs

>> fine, this is a pure quicken matter.

>> I suspected file size because

>> (as we all know) quicken recalculates everything each time you

>> enter anything

> Not really. But it probably does recalculate what is visible on

> your screen when you add/change/delete transactions. Maybe if

> you close the Account Bar, or tell Quicken not to show amounts

> on the Account Bar, you can speed things up a bit, especially

> for Investment accounts.

>> (thus the screen flicker problem).

> I don't believe the screen flicker problem has a single cause.

> There have been many reported "causes" for the screen flicker

> problem; including third party software.

>> Even accepting

>> downloading transactions will take about 10 seconds per

>> transaction.

> If you're experience long delays when processing investment

> account transactions, you might want to consider your Quicken

> price history as a possible source of the problem. First: it

> can get corrupted, and Validate will not fix that corruption.

> Second: I believe as the price history file gets very large,

> investment account related processing times can suffer while

> Quicken finds the prices necessary for its computations.

> To get a feel for any role your Quicken price history might play

> in your slow processing time, BACKUP, then rename QDATA.QPH

> (where QDATA is the name of your Quicken data). Next time you

> start Quicken, it will build an empty price history file. Your

> market values will be zero, but you can run some tests to see

> what sort of response time you get. When you finish

> "testing",

> restore your backup.

> Then decide whether you want to keep your price history file; or

> rename, then re-create it.

> If your price history is corrupted or too large, you can

> probably recover just the prices you want (with some effort).

> There are several ways to get historical prices inclucing

> Quicken's historical price download, recalculating Quicken

> investment accounts, downloading from Yahoo and similar, and a

> handy little free program called "QPH File Processor" (Google

> will find it) that can extract selected prices directly from a

> QPH file and create a comma delimited file that Quicken can

> import.

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