QuickBooks Tip – File Size & DB File Fragments What Do They Mean?

The size of your QuickBooks file and the number of DB File Fragments determines the health of your QuickBooks company data file. Most people don’t periodically check the health of their QuickBooks file to help prevent data corruption – mainly because they don’t realize that they should or even how to go about it.

Monday’s blog post – Basic File Maintenance Before & After You Upgrade – talked about checking your current file size and health before before you upgrade to a new version of QuickBooks.  In reality, you should periodically check this information just to see how healthy your file is or isn’t.

To check the size of your own QuickBooks file – with QuickBooks open press the CTRL and the 1 keys at the same time OR press the F2 key at the top of your keyboard – this will open a Product Information window; similar to that shown below, paying close attention to the circled areas – file location, file size and DB (database) file fragments:

The screenshot above provides the following information about our own company data file:

• File Size 180932 K or roughly 180 megs which is a fairly large file; this is confirmed by the fact that there are 17583 total transactions in the file
• DB File Fragments 3 – anything under 20 DB file fragments means that your file is pretty healthy, while anything over 20 means your file is sick!
  

There are some things that you can do to try and repair you QuickBooks file yourself:

1. Rebuild you company data file and check the Product Information Window after to see if the number of DB file fragments has been reduced
2. Create and restore a Portable company file {watch our YouTube video} and check your results
3. Seek the help of a professional to repair your data file – such as QuickBooksUsers.com or QB or not QB

Keeping your QuickBooks data file healthy means that it will perform better!

We hope you found this tip to be helpful, if so please take a moment to leave a comment or share it on your favorite social network.