Quicken

[Bret4207]

So there I was, happily paying my endless bills and entering everything into the Quicken program on the Dell. Says I to myself, "Better back up to a CD, it's been a month or so." I learned to do this after loosing about 3 weeks of entries rather mysteriously not long ago. (Oddly enough my 19 year old daughter had inumerable explanations on how it could have happened, none involving her) So anyways, I go and start burnibg the CD, or so I think. I was trying to add this backup to the first CD I did. Well, next thing you know Ol' Bretster observes that 04/08/05 and all it's entries seem to be missing. Infact the whole register back to the last backup was missing!!! I won't go into the frantic phone calls and typing that occured. Lets just say it wasn't much fun. I finally found a contact number at Quicken, non-toll free of course, and called. A very nice lady in India or Pakistan or some other place where English is not the first lanuage managed to walk me through the recovery. I learned that recovering a lost file is plain simple, you just have to know the freakin' super secret file name which is what costs you $24.95 to find out. It's *.qdf in case you need it. I got everything back to where it was with only a few tweeks needed. I then tried backing up to CD again and the same thing happened. At least I was prepared this time.

Now for some CD burning lessons. A floppy was sure easier.

[trooperdan]

Tpr. Bret, Trooper Dan here, not a LEO; just a fat old retired paratrooper! I suggest you backup your Quicken to you local hard drive, making note of where you tell the backup to go and what you named it then either copy it to a floppy (if your 'puter has one) or burn it to a CD then. Don't finalize the CD or you won't be able to add any more files to it and that would waste 99.99 percent of the CD. You can give each backup a name, like include the date of the backup; that way you will have more than one point in time you can restore to if things go bad.

Let me know what operating system you are running, Windows XP home, Windows 2000, etc and if you know the name of the CD burning program, let me know that as well.

BTW, I came VERY close to bidding on those rusty .44 molds on eBay last week! Glad I didn't and they went to someone that appreciated them. My handle on eBay is Glock17shooter.

[Bret4207]

Hey Dan. Don't worry about the fat. They tell me it's a sign of wisdom. USMC myself.

Anyways. I've got Windows XP Home and the system wants to use Roxio CD creator. I'm missing a thing or two because it just won't back up what I want. I have no floppy drive, a mistake I made when I ordered the 'puter and one I may rectify since I know how to use floppies. I did back to the hard drive and that makes recovery easier. My concern is that with so many sopies to the hard drive the 'puter will start trashing some or losing them somewhere in cyber space. Had this happen with my old 'puter. I really should just read the tutorials and learn to do the CD's since they are cheaper than floppies these days.

I just thought with so many people using Quicken these days the story would be appreciated.

[Scrounger]

Hey Dan. Don't worry about the fat. They tell me it's a sign of wisdom. USMC myself.

Anyways. I've got Windows XP Home and the system wants to use Roxio CD creator. I'm missing a thing or two because it just won't back up what I want. I have no floppy drive, a mistake I made when I ordered the 'puter and one I may rectify since I know how to use floppies. I did back to the hard drive and that makes recovery easier. My concern is that with so many sopies to the hard drive the 'puter will start trashing some or losing them somewhere in cyber space. Had this happen with my old 'puter. I really should just read the tutorials and learn to do the CD's since they are cheaper than floppies these days.

I just thought with so many people using Quicken these days the story would be appreciated.

I'm probably the last person that should give computer advice so just consider this a comment from the peanut gallery. I'm assumming your Quicken sessions come in relatively small chunks if you can save it on a floppy. How about opening an internet email account at Yahoo or Hot Mail, and mailing yourself a copy of your Quicken session each time you use it? Most of these email accounts have fairly generous storage sizes. Then you could make a CD copy of them when you're able. Or email the Quicken data to someone who is able to store it for you or make it into a CD?