Quicken 2019 List of Default Categories

Unknown

My 87 year old mother completely messed up the categories in Quicken 2019. Is there a list of the original defaults categories I can download? Is there a way to restore the original default categories/

splasher

You could either restore a backup file (don't overwrite the current file) or create a new file and export a QIF file (File->File Export->QIF) exporting only the Categories.

Then open up the messed up file and import the QIF file you just exported (File->File Import->QIF).

OR

The other option is to just restore a recent backup (you do have backups, correct?) and update it to be current.

Unknown

No she doesn't have backups. Even if she did, she has been doing this for years, much to my dismay. Thanks for the help.

Rocket J Squirrel

Quicken has a function called Manage Categories which can restore Quicken's default categories.

Open the Category List. Click on the Options menu at the lower left of the dialog. One of the choices is Manage Categories. Click that.

You'll be presented with a list of categories on the left and and empty list on the right. Choose some or all of the categories on the left and Add them to the list on the right, then click OK.

Oh, and back up her data before you do this, just in case you don't like the results.

mshiggins

What do you mean by "messed up"? Maybe your mother likes the categories the way they are.

Unknown

I appreciate the insight, however, I am pretty sure she doesn't understand the concept. She has 485 categories, like "$1000""Ooooo""househodr""household""house hold""Heffry" etc.

Regards

Jim_Harman

Quicken has a function called Manage Categories which can restore Quicken's default categories.

Open the Category List. Click on the Options menu at the lower left of the dialog. One of the choices is Manage Categories. Click that.

You'll be presented with a list of categories on the left and and empty list on the right. Choose some or all of the categories on the left and Add them to the list on the right, then click OK.

Oh, and back up her data before you do this, just in case you don't like the results.

It's nice to know you can restore the built-in Categories.

One issue I have not been able to work around, however, is that Quicken uses the initial built-in Categories when you keep the default setting and let it automatically categorize downloaded transactions with payees that don't have a match in your Memorized Payee List.

If you rename a built-in category, it auto-categorizes to the new name, which is good.

The problem is that if you delete a built-in category, it is no longer able to auto-pick a category for transactions that match the deleted one, even if you restore the deleted category.

It is not obvious how they could fix this, other than showing a sterner warning about deleting categories and/or providing some way to manually repair the links.

If the auto-categorizing is important to you, you must always rename the built-in categories to your preferred names rather than deleting them and creating new ones.

splasher

I appreciate the insight, however, I am pretty sure she doesn't understand the concept. She has 485 categories, like "$1000""Ooooo""househodr""household""house hold""Heffry" etc.

Regards

Have fun cleaning that up.

Unknown

I appreciate the insight, however, I am pretty sure she doesn't understand the concept. She has 485 categories, like "$1000""Ooooo""househodr""household""house hold""Heffry" etc.

Regards

I know how I would approach the problem, basically the same way I approach categorizing my transactions.

I see people that seem to need very detailed categories and and "put everything in its place" kind of deal.

Me for I use pretty general categories and I don't worry much if things aren't perfectly categorized.  For instance Safeway is Groceries.  Unless I have a big purchase there that should be in another category like Household, I don't worry about it.

What that mean is to a large extent I have an one to one relationship between my categories and my payees.

So to fix a problem like this I would go through each payee and just give all the transactions the same category.

I have a feeling that would work well in this situation considering that clearly BRM's Mother isn't really concerned about "categories" in the first place.

As I get older I'm actually less and less concerned about such things.  My wife is concerned about it because she wants to see how much she spends on her hobbies and such.  But at this point I could certainly live without knowing exactly what I spent on this or that.  The only real important questions are:

Do I have enough money to support my lifestyle this year?
How long will my savings last spent at this rate.
Do i have enough money in the account that pays the bills when they come in?

Jim_Harman

I appreciate the insight, however, I am pretty sure she doesn't understand the concept. She has 485 categories, like "$1000""Ooooo""househodr""household""house hold""Heffry" etc.

Regards

I agree. Except for items I need to track for taxes, I think it is best to have a relatively small number of categories but to use them consistently.

And sometimes it's best not to know exactly how much we spent on each spouse's hobbies!