Is it possible to search all transactions including hidden accounts? (Q Mac)

Marys

Is there anyway to do a SEARCH covering ALL my transactions including those in my hidden accounts. I'm am a long-time Quicken user since the late 1990s. My current version is Quicken Deluxe 2019 (Mac version). I have a lot of transactions and many closed and hidden accounts. I am familiar creating reports that include hidden accounts and filtering them by payees, categories, tags, or accounts but what I want to do is SEARCH the transactions for a certain word in the memo.

I can do this for accounts that are not hidden using the ALL TRANSACTIONS window, but this filters out hidden accounts. I can create a report of all my transactions including hidden accounts, but I can't find any way to search those transactions unless I export to Excel and then search.

Does anyone know if this is possible?

This question really should not be in the REPORTS category, but it didn't exactly fit in the other choices either.

jacobs

@Marys Good News, Bad News.

The Bad News is that, no, you cannot correctly Search in hidden accounts. You either need to unhide account, Search, and re-hide them -- tedious at best, and worse the more accounts you have.

So-so News: If you can construct a Report to show what you want, when you're on the  Customize screen for a report, there's a checkbox to "Include accounts hidden from Reports."

Possibly Helpful News: There is a way to generate a quick report on a Payee or a Category. This isn't nearly as flexible as Quicken 2007 QuickReports, but it may help in some circumstances. Control-Click on any transaction that has the Payee or Category you want to search on, and from the pop-up menu, you can select "Report on [Payee name]" or "Report on [Category]", and it will build a report on that field. By default, it's for the current year, but you can click Customize to change the date range.

"But wait!" you're saying. "I'm trying to find a transaction with XYZ Payee or ABC Category -- I can't click on it to build a report if I have to find it first." So here's the trick I sometimes use. Create a new transaction. Type the Payee name if search for a Payee's past transactions. Or type a dummy Payee name and enter the Category I want to search for. Save the dummy transaction, use it for the quick report, and then delete the dummy transaction. Yes, it's a bunch of steps instead of one easy one; I'm just presenting ways to get work done.

Finally, the Good News: the development team has indicated in this thread that they are planning to add the capability to Search on hidden accounts in a future update. We don't know when that feature is coming, but they don't mark many of them with a "Planned" status here, so one can hope it means somewhat sooner rather than way later.

jacobs

@Marys Good News, Bad News.

The Bad News is that, no, you cannot correctly Search in hidden accounts. You either need to unhide account, Search, and re-hide them -- tedious at best, and worse the more accounts you have.

So-so News: If you can construct a Report to show what you want, when you're on the  Customize screen for a report, there's a checkbox to "Include accounts hidden from Reports."

Possibly Helpful News: There is a way to generate a quick report on a Payee or a Category. This isn't nearly as flexible as Quicken 2007 QuickReports, but it may help in some circumstances. Control-Click on any transaction that has the Payee or Category you want to search on, and from the pop-up menu, you can select "Report on [Payee name]" or "Report on [Category]", and it will build a report on that field. By default, it's for the current year, but you can click Customize to change the date range.

"But wait!" you're saying. "I'm trying to find a transaction with XYZ Payee or ABC Category -- I can't click on it to build a report if I have to find it first." So here's the trick I sometimes use. Create a new transaction. Type the Payee name if search for a Payee's past transactions. Or type a dummy Payee name and enter the Category I want to search for. Save the dummy transaction, use it for the quick report, and then delete the dummy transaction. Yes, it's a bunch of steps instead of one easy one; I'm just presenting ways to get work done.

Finally, the Good News: the development team has indicated in this thread that they are planning to add the capability to Search on hidden accounts in a future update. We don't know when that feature is coming, but they don't mark many of them with a "Planned" status here, so one can hope it means somewhat sooner rather than way later.

Marys

Thanks. I am familiar with filtering reports by payees, categories, etc. and including hidden accounts in reports. It's searching the memo that I'm needing. Anyway I'm glad to here the development team is at least aware that there is a need even if it's not yet planned.

For me the least tedious is to create a report of ALL transactions and export to Excel and then search.

Thanks for your reply.