unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ and A
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Q) I just archived. But there are many transactions left from before the archive date. Why?
A) The more you know about archiving; the less likely you are to do it. All pain. Precious little gain. I do not recommend archiving. YMMV.
First, there is little reason to archive--as you've found out, by design the impact is limited--and some reasons not to--primarily that you can't go back at all easily once you've archived and your archive file will overlap the file you use going forward since it's just a backup prior to removing transactions. If, like many of us, you record all manner of useful data like the serial numbers of your toys and when you bought a battery for the car last, taking this data out of your main data file is not something you'll want to do.
Second, archiving does not remove all transactions. Transactions related to investment buys/sells and, hence, capital gains, for instance, are not archived.
Third, there is little evidence that archiving has a significant impact on performance, especially given the limitations on what data it actually removes.
Fourth, hard disks are selling for less then $0.75/GB and the smallest 2.5" laptop drives being manufactured today are typically 10GB in size. Very few people have data files bigger than, say, 50 MB. That makes 200 extremely large Money data files you can store on the smallest hard disk being manufactured today. (Capacities and costs as of 11/24/2004. The trend of larger disks costing less money will no doubt continue. This answer may or may not be updated accordingly.)
There are a number of MSKB articles on the subject of limitations of archiving. On-line help even describes it pretty well. Also, see the question "How do I un-archive?"
References:
MSKB: 191537 How archiving really works II
MSKB: 306825 How archiving really works III
MSKB: 77462 How archiving really works
Please see this disclaimer if you are using Money 2005 or this comment if you are using Money 2006.
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Last update: 10 December 2006 |
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