Splasm Software Discussions

I noticed today that my Chequebook Pro "Accounts" file got smaller; today it's 3.2 MB, and last month it was 4.1 MB. I asked it to create a backup last month (this backup is also 4.1 MB).

Does it do some sort of housekeeping when you initiate a backup? Is that why it's smaller?

I haven't deleted any entries between then and now. Does it change that much? I would have thought the size would go up over time, not down.

Any ideas?

Another question I also looked in the "Chequebook 2" folder, and I have a "Backups" folder inside that folder. I'm not sure if this is some sort of auto backup, as it's not current and has what seem like ZIP backups that go from 2011 to 2015. Did an older version of Chequebook Pro create them? Is it safe to discard them?

In regular use, the database inside each document can grow larger as you add data but won't shrink as you remove data, so, over time, it tends to take up space it doesn't really need. We occasionally tell the database to "vacuum" the extra space, essentially removing all the empty parts it doesn't need anymore. If you haven't removed an Account or a ton of Entries recently, that occasional vacuuming is a likely explanation for the difference in document size.

The automatic backup feature creates a compressed backup whenever you open a document and it's been seven or more days since the last backup. They're usually safe to remove if you're sure you won't need them - and who would need anything quite as old as 2015? You should have backups from this year and last, though, and you'll want to keep those just in case. If you don't see recent backups, you might be in a backup folder for a document you no longer use or you could even be in an orphaned CheckBook 2 folder for a version of CheckBook Pro that precedes the version 2.5 upgrade, when we adopted Apple's sandboxing security measures and the application couldn't clean up some remnants of previous versions.

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Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

Thank you for your prompt reply. That will explain it. The occasional database clean: I didn't remove anything, but I did go and change the item description for maybe around 200 entries a few weeks ago to make stuff more readable on repeating items. So there were a lot of changes to the description field, but not any removals.

You triggered my memory about why I have this backup from 2011 to 2015. When I updated my MacOS and, I think, the version of Chequebook Pro around the end of 2015, I for some reason wanted to make a copy of the preferences and found they were kept in the "Chequebook 2" folder in the library folder and moved a copy of that folder to my documents folder. Then I put the accounts file into that folder in my documents folder. This explains why it only goes to 2015; the real-live Chequebook 2 folder is the current date for its backups (I just checked).

Also, I'm actually running only version 2.5.7. I had auto-update off, and I would manually check now and then with the "Check for Update" menu option, but I guess it never found anything. So I see you're on 2.7.22, so I guess I better update.

Thanks again for your assistance. Chequebook Pro is so good; I've been using it from 2008 to the present day. I can't live without it.