Size of my ICash File

Jade · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 23

Hi,

As a previous Quicken user I had historical data that I wanted to bring into ICash. I created a 2 new ICash Documents for the historical data from before 2007. After I imported the data from Quicken the file stats are as follows:

Quicken Import File #1 - 2,183 transactions, 3.2 MB
Quicken Import File #2 - 7,612 transactions, 5.2 MB

The file I created to store data from 2007 on was updated directly from importing OFX banking files, not by importing existing data from Quicken. The stats for this file are:

ICash File - 1,458 transactions 20.7 MB

Why is this file so much larger? If I have approximately 1,200 transactions per year will my file continue to grow at this rate? Although I'm not really short on storage space, the database just seems rather large compared to the others and compared to my original Quicken file sizes.

Thanks, Jade Confused

stanbusk · Site Admin Joined: 28 Dec 2005 Posts: 2372

One version of iCash was using a bigger database allocation size. As a result an empty file was already 20 Mb rather than 2 Mb. After several customers complaining we reverted that change. You can convert you 20.7 MB file to the lower size using the recovering tool.

Jade · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 23

Hi! I tried using the recovering tool on the menu and the file is only 0.1 MB smaller.... do I have to do something else? Thanks, Jade

angie · Joined: 28 Apr 2008 Posts: 5

I tried this too and didn't see a difference in file size whatsoever.

stanbusk · Site Admin Joined: 28 Dec 2005 Posts: 2372

The other method is to export as XML and import back in a new file. That will fully recreate the file.

Jade · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 23

Maybe I should start off by saying I tried out ICash for a few days and then purchased it in March 2008 so I'm not sure if the release changes you referred to in your reply actually apply to my case.

However, I did do an export to XML and then imported the XML file into a new file. The original ICASH file was 20.9 MB at the time. The new file that was created from the import is still 20.7 MB.

Could my file really need to be that large? Is there any other info I can provide which may explain why this is? Thanks again for your help.

stanbusk · Site Admin Joined: 28 Dec 2005 Posts: 2372

Are you using current v4.3?

Jade · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 23

Nope, version 4.2.2. I'll upgrade and give it another try.

Jade · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 23

Ok, I upgraded to v4.3 and tried the XML export/import scenario again. Same results. The file was decreased by only around .1 MB

stanbusk · Site Admin Joined: 28 Dec 2005 Posts: 2372

Really strange. Anyway why do you want to reduce the file size? It is not really important.

angie · Joined: 28 Apr 2008 Posts: 5

To some people file size is important - telling us / them it's not is essentially invalidating whatever they have to say.

That aside (and maybe this deserves a new thread), not only is my file size at 20.x MB (still don't understand why but can probably live with it), the file now takes a good 20 seconds to load despite being on a G5 with just over 50% free disk space and 3.5 GB of RAM. Sometimes Photoshop takes less time to load! I'm running version 4.4 of iCash.

Overall, it seems there are some performance problems. For me personally, this become an issue when I want to enter a transaction quickly and then close.

stanbusk · Site Admin Joined: 28 Dec 2005 Posts: 2372

If it takes to much time to load just deactivate the auto-backup feature from the preferences.

TheOrbix · Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 9

Hello... just a quick note: I've noticed the same behaviour with my own copy of iCash (version 4.4.1).

I have approximately 1200 transactions and the data file is 20.8Mb.

I did an export to XML and imported in a new data file. The sixe of the new data file is 20.7Mb... not a big change.

The XML export file is 4.9Mb in total.