How to Archive Old Transactions (Year End Copy)

For those who have used Quicken in the past, it had a feature to archive your old transactions. It was often called a Year End Copy.

Microsoft Excel can easily handle thousands of rows of data (transactions). You can safely keep many years of data in your Excel Checkbook spreadsheets, but if you would prefer to save (archive) older transactions, here’s how.

1. Save your current checkbook with a new name, for example: checkbook 2024.
2. Re-open your original checkbook. Take note and write down your current balance as a safety check.
3. Decide what your new starting balance entry will be. For example, if you want to erase all entries before January 1, 2025, find your last entry of 2024 (e.g., on or near 12/31/2024).
4. Write down the balance that appears on that last entry in 2024.
5. Scroll to the top of your register and find the “Starting Balance” row and input that balance number that you wrote down, and change the date for your starting balance to be 1/01/2025 (as an example).
6. Delete every row that occurs after your starting balance, but stop when you get to the first transaction that you want to keep. For example, if my checkbook had transactions in 2023 and 2024, I would select and delete all of my transactions that are in that date range.

If your current balance that is displayed still matches what you wrote down (see step #2), then all is well.