How to purge and shrink a bloated MYOB company file
An AccountRight file grows until it is slow, then unstable, then unusable. Purge is MYOB’s remedy — but it does not cover everything, and the rest is one record at a time.
MYOB AccountRight keeps everything in one company file, and it grows until it hurts. The remedy MYOB points to is to purge closed transactions, which clears whole categories at once and is irreversible. But purge does not cover cards, purchase orders or sales orders, and MYOB has no bulk delete for those — so for a badly bloated file the only built-in option is to open and delete each record by hand.
Why the file grows, and the ceiling you are told about
This is an AccountRight problem specifically: it is the desktop product, and your whole business lives in a single company file on a computer or server. Every transaction you record is added to that file and nothing ages out on its own. As it grows, MYOB gets slower and less stable, and the figure the MYOB tooling community works to is 1.8 GB — the point at which the file can become unusable.
The MYOB Business (cloud) product does not have this problem: there is no file on your machine to bloat. If you are on MYOB Business, this page is not your problem — your limit is simply that nothing deletes in bulk.
What purge does — and what it leaves behind
Purge is MYOB’s own answer to file bloat: it removes closed or historical transactions in bulk. That is the good news. The catch is coverage. Cards, purchase orders and sales orders cannot be purged, and there is no mechanism in MYOB to delete them in bulk either. So a file whose size is mostly sales and purchase orders will not shrink much however often you purge.
If you cannot find the purge option
Do not assume you broke something. Reports from users on current AccountRight versions are that the purge function is not where it used to be — which is exactly why third-party purge tools for the newer company-file format exist. Check your version’s own help and the MYOB community before concluding the option has moved; if it genuinely is not exposed, that changes your options below.
The realistic options
| Option | What it clears | Cost / limit |
|---|---|---|
| Purge (MYOB, where available) | Closed / historical transactions by category | Irreversible; does not cover cards, POs or SOs |
| Delete by hand | Anything you can open and delete | One record at a time — days or weeks on a large file |
| Keystroke-scripting service | Records you could delete manually, automated | From AUD $660 inc GST + quoted scripting |
| Archive and start a fresh file | The whole history, moved aside | Clean file, but you lose day-to-day access to the old one |
The service terms and purge limits are the vendor’s published ones, checked 3 October 2026. MYOB changes what it exposes between versions; trust the product over this page.
Before you purge: back up, and keep the backup off the machine
Purge is permanent, so the company-file backup you take beforehand is the only way back. Keep it somewhere other than the machine that holds the live file — a backup that dies with the file is not a backup. Then confirm what the purge will clear before you run it.
What a safe bulk delete looks like
You cannot delete what you have not exported. Reconciled lines and closed periods are reported as skipped, never forced — QuickBooks will not allow it, and a tool that tried would be the harm this design exists to avoid.
Is there a better way?
We build Multi-Delete for QuickBooks Online, not MYOB — so this page answers your question and stops there. There is no MYOB tool from us today; if a safe, self-serve MYOB cleanup ever makes sense to build, it will be described on these pages first.
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Questions people actually ask
Why is my MYOB AccountRight company file so large?
Because everything lives in one file. Every transaction, card, order and history entry you record is added to the company file on disk, and it never shrinks on its own. Over years of trading — or after a bad import that added thousands of records — the file grows large enough to slow MYOB down.
What is MYOB’s company file size limit?
The figure the MYOB tooling community works to is 1.8 GB — at that point an AccountRight file can become unusable. It is a practical ceiling rather than a setting, and you feel it before you reach it: the file gets slower and less stable as it grows. Take the number as a warning sign, not a line to creep up on.
What does purge do in MYOB?
Purge removes closed or historical transactions in bulk, which is the main way MYOB itself recommends shrinking a company file. It is irreversible, so a backup before you start is not optional. And it only covers the record types MYOB allows purging — which is not all of them.
What can’t you purge in MYOB?
Not everything can be purged. Cards, purchase orders and sales orders are the common examples — they have no purge path, and there is no built-in way to delete them in bulk either. For those the only MYOB option is to open and delete each record by hand.
I can’t find the purge option in my MYOB. Why?
It depends on your version and file type. Reports from users on current AccountRight versions are that the purge function is not where it used to be, or is not exposed at all — which is why third-party purge tools for the newer company-file format exist. Check your MYOB version’s help before assuming you have done something wrong.
Can I bulk delete records to shrink the file faster?
Not inside MYOB. There is no bulk delete for transactions, cards, purchase orders or sales orders — purge covers only what MYOB allows it to, and the rest is one record at a time. For a file with thousands of records that is days or weeks of work, which is why a paid keystroke-scripting service exists.
Is purging a MYOB file safe?
It is safe in the sense that MYOB intends it, and dangerous in the sense that it is permanent. Purge does not delete everything — it clears the categories it supports — but what it clears is gone. Take a company-file backup first, keep it somewhere off the machine, and confirm what will be purged before you run it.