How do I clean up all data prior to 12/31/2003?

Hello PVCS,

Usually the reason that transactions were left after the clean up is that they are not closed out or are still waiting some sort of action to be taken.

The help(F1) menu in QuickBooks 2006 under "clean up" there is substantial documentation on what transactions are removed and which transactions will not be removed. The help information will help clarify why some transactions were not removed.

Another option is to select the "remove all Transactions," option, this will remove all data including all the open transactions. Be sure to have a backup of your file before you select this option.

Hope this helps and have a great day,

Caleb

The 'condense', or 'Cleaning up Data' as they call it now, does NOT seem to work.. I've talked to Tech Spt until I'm totally frustrated. When we upgraded from QBP03 to QBP06, our datafile went from 177,000kb to 230,000kb, and s-l-o-w-e-d down considerably. I've tried numerous times, to condense, and each time it 'hangs' at 17%, causing me to have to do a restore from backup.

Also, NOT being able to 'turn-off' the Audit trail slows things down.. but that's another topic. What a DOG! Paul

Hello CavXO,

I am sorry to hear about your troubles with 2006, many users have installed and love the program.

I don't know if you still have the 2003 program installed, but I would load up the old company datafile in QB 03 and run a rebuild and verify. After that make a backup and then open up the 2006 program and convert the newly rebuilt file to 2006. After you have converted the file, you can run a condense or clean up in 2006. Then create a portable company file, and restore from the portable file. This should shrink your file size to the smallest possible and protect you from any possible errors making their way into the file.

Hope this helps and have a great day,

Caleb

I've got the same problem as pvcs. We just found out about the clean-up feature a month or two back and decided to wait until we upgraded to 2006 to do it. It goes through the whole process just fine, backup, archive copy, etc., but the company file doesn't get smaller and invoices etc. from before the date I set are still there, stretching back into the 90s.

If there was some open transaction or something holding things up I would think it would still remove the stuff from before then, but as far as I can tell nothing at all is being removed. My second attempt I checked all the boxes to tell it to remove stuff even if there is still something open, it made no difference.

It would be nice if this worked, especially after the upgrade increased the file size to start with.

Hi Ray,

You might want to check out services at:
http://www.quickbooksgroup.com...

The can help with this problem.

I guess I should ask if anybody has successfully cleaned a file and condensed the data. I've since attempted it on other, much smaller, company files, including one of the sample company files provided with the program. The process finishes just fine, the "archive" copy is created, but the company file is left at exactly the same size as it began.

Can it possibly be something we've not done right in our files, transactions aren't being "closed" as far as QB is concerned even when we are finished with them?

Turns out the knowledge base does have some answers on this.

"Archiving and condensing data
KB ID#: 201096
The Clean Up Company Data wizard archives your company data, removes unused list elements and journals selected transactions to increase efficiency. Note that in QuickBooks 2006, the Clean Up Company Data wizard does not actually reduce the size of your data file on the system hard drive."

It doesn't actually reduce the size of the data file? What good is it then? What are the transactions that are supposedly removed? All the old POs and Invoices and such are still present in the company files I've "cleaned up". I thought it was supposed to take those out and replace them with sales summary numbers for those months. Or is that just how it worked in QB 2003? Seriously, somebody tell me what good it is to have a feature that does nothing. Why would anybody want to bother?

This sounds to me like Intuit screwed it up and instead of fixing it decided to claim they meant to do it that way in this version of the software. Way to serve your customers. No wonder OfficeMax has so many accounting programs on the shelf that make a big deal out of their ability to import Quickbooks files.

"Compressing QuickBooks 2006 data
KB ID#: aac11e95
The QuickBooks Clean up Company Data feature (called Condense & Archive in earlier versions of QuickBooks) may not decrease the size of the data file on the hard drive although it does remove the same list members and transactions as the Condense & Archive feature in prior versions of QuickBooks.
You may be able to use the Portable Company File feature to compress your company file. This method can recover space in data files that was previously occupied by deleted transactions and may be used as a follow up to the Clean Up Company Data wizard. Certain types of transactions (such as Inventory transactions) cannot compress by any method. Results will vary based on the condition and contents of individual company files."

A kludge workaround then? I suppose if it at least gets my 2006 Pro file back to the size it was as a 2003 Pro file I should count myself lucky. At this point I don't expect it to do anything useful but I'll try it anyway.

Hi Ray,

Did you try the portable file workaround? Did it work?

I think it is fair to point out that the only people saying that there are people who "love" this upgrade are intuit advisors. I don't see too many people who say it is working out. If condensing the file doesn't condense anything, and the size of the files are doubled when you upgrade, and everything is moving so slowly, isn't it time that intuit 'fesses up and says "we screwed up, here's a patch that can revert you to your old version"???? I'm a single user, my computer is a rocket, but I can get up, do the laundry and still have to wait for a transaction to finish. Get with it intuit, you've robbed us blind.

I did the portable file today. Oh yes the file size went down a little but it is still slooooow!.

My boss wants solution to fix this now and I am currently looking into other software as this slowness is killing us.

You may not like this suggestion - but it was the only thing that worked for us: wait until a suitable year end, export your lists, create a new company and import the lists. You will of course have to work out how to deal with opening balances - we entered them manually; you could try an IIF import but that is difficult to do correctly, but there are utilities to do this is manual is not an option

Hi,

Check out the QB forum under "Reduce your File Size".

http://www.quickbooksgroup.com...

They can help you with this problem

Any luck with the cleanup? ... I have a similar problem where it goes up to 17% and stops.

Each time it locksup I have to go back to restore from a backup.

Thanks,
Pradeep

The 'work-around' for the Cleanup feature, that DOESN'T work, seems to be to just create a new set of books from (a Back-up copy of) the old set. Then delete ALL transactions, in the NEW set (THAT part of the 'Clean-up' seems to work okay). Then create a 'Portable Company File', then restore your books from that PCF. This appears to 'let all the air' out of the file, reducing it's size.
This gives you an 'empty' set of books, with all your accounts, lists, customers, vendors, etc. (everything but 'transactions')
We then re-enter the starting balances for the beginning of the the current period, and all the transactions for the current period. (This is why it's best to do this immediately after the 1st of the year)
It's a bit of an 'ugly' way to have to do it, but it brought our book size down from 250-meg, to 40-meg.
Good Luck, Paul

P.S.: with NO Transactions, in the books, you can now delete all those obsolete accounts, vendors, customers, and inventory items! Another big plus++, to me.

I just want to "delete" years 2000 to 2005. QB is getting real slow. Anyone know a simple way to do it?

Hello VaSunshine,
Welcome to the community forums. There is a Clean up Company Data option that is included with QuickBooks that will allow you to remove transactions as of a date that you specify. There will be some transactions and list items that won't be removed because they deal with Inventory or they are linked to open transactions.
Here is how you find the tool in QuickBooks. Click on the File drop down menu, choose Utilities and click on Clean up Company Data.
For more information on Cleaning up your data Click Here, or do a search in QuickBooks help for cleaning data.
You can also check the QuickBooks Solutions Marketplace to see if there is a 3rd party tool that will allow you to remove transactions. Here is a link.
Regards,

Good luck. We, like many others have posted above, have found that the Cleanup utility doesn't do what it is suppose to do.

When you call tech support they fiegn suprise, as though you are the only user to have called with this issue. They try to tell you that with very large files (500mb) - there could be trouble. My file is only 154mb - shot down that theory. They have no information regarding maximum number of records that the program is designed to handle. Basically, there's a problem and they are not going to cop to it. Time for a change of software. They don't seem to care that they will lose customers.

Hello wogoIt,
Welcome to the community forums. Sorry to hear about your bad support experience. I can answer a few of the questions you are asking, such as the maximum number of transactions QuickBooks can handle, it used to be 2 billion transactions before we changed our database type but it should be able to handle even more now.
When files grow to around 60 to 80 MB they are considered large data files, so your file at 154 MB is a pretty big file. I read your other post where you said the condense was hanging at around 38%. Just to let you know that the condense can take a long time to complete and the time increases if you have a really large data file, so I would recommend letting the condense run over night or during a period when you can go without using QuickBooks for a few hours or more.
The condense feature was designed to remove unused list items, but when it comes to removing old transactions it  gets complicated because it won't remove transactions that are linked to inventory or other open transactions, but those are only two of the reasons that transactions aren't removed when doing a condense. In the Condense feature's prime the biggest file reduction you would see was around 30% and that was in an optimal circumstance.
I would recommend letting the condense complete and then using the portable data file feature to shrink the data file size even further. When you create a portable data file it removes all blank records from the file, such as things you have deleted from the file. Deleting a record from QuickBooks, just deletes the information in the record, but it still retains the blank record in QuickBooks, similar to deleting the information in a cell in Excel deletes the information, but not the cell itself.
Regards,

I have been trying to condense a data file for 4 days now. You say that all this stuff works but it does not. I have worked on QB for years now and have done this process including starting new data files for clients. I was even a Certified Quickbooks Pro Advisor for awhile. You say if the file hangs up, mine is at 19% just let it finish, how long am I supposed to wait, is 21 hours enough? As that is how long I waited at 19% before I cancelled it out. You keep posting messages about how to do this, but we are, and we are telling you it does not work. Now what? I'm beyond frustrated and your tech people have never been able to tell me anything I didn't already know about this program....

My company file is only 41 MB. When I run Cleanup it doesn't hang.

However... my company file increase in size by a MB and none of the fully paid receivables were removed. This worked fine in the 2003 version.

I tried the PCF workaround and it reduced the company file by 2 MB. Naturally, all the receivables from mid-June 2003 onward were still there.

It is totally impractical to remove ALL data; we want the detail from 1/1/05 forwards.

I don't believe that any of the experts have adequately answered if this issue is going to be addressed in either the 2006 or a subsequent version. It would be swell if they would do so.