Things that should have been included from Mac 2007

Leslie Jones

I have been using M2019 for several weeks now and it is taking me at least 50% longer to do things than before with M2007. Most of that is too many keystrokes are required to do tasks.

1) Can't use up/down arrows to advance through categories unless the list is already showing
2) Can't add clear when entering a transaction to make all fields blank
3) Have to manually categorize auto downloads. example: My pay deposit self categorizes as "Personal Income". I use "Salary:Net". I should be able to make a rule that automatically changes "Personal Income" to Salary: Net".
4) Transfer accounts doesn't show up on list unless I retype Transfer. Again, no up/down arrow function
5) doesn't highlight when tabing to any field. I have to manually highlight to change.
6) If I enter a new transaction for 9/30/19, when I select "new" again it defaults to another date, every time. It should default to the last date I entered so I can advance using +/- more easily or do more transactions with the same date.
7) date field separates month/date/year making it impossible to copy and paste a date.

None of this is rocket science. It makes Q for Mac2019 much more time consuming than necessary. If there is someplace I should post this list where maybe some Quicken for MAC person would see it let me know.

jacobs

@Leslie Jones For Misc with a bunch of subcategories, you should be able to just type "Mi" and then use the down arrow to choose the appropriate subcategory.

But I rarely use the arrow keys; if I'm doing entry just from the keyboard, I find it faster to type what I need. So if you have, for instance, Misc:Cash as a category and subcategory, you can type "Mi:C" or "Mi:Ca" and get what you want -- those extra 2 or 3 keystrokes are probably fewer strokes and faster than a bunch of down arrows.

A tangential bit of advice: I'm sure what you have for your categories works for you, but an accountant would likely tell you that if you have recurring transactions in 12 subcategories of Misc., those aren't really "Misc." at all, and should be put in their own categories or subcategories of existing categories. I'm not sure what sort of Misc. expense you have, but do they really not fall under food/dining, charitable contributions, home repairs, etc.?  Put another way, miscellaneous expenses, sort of by definition, shouldn't typically have a lot of subcategories, because if you can categorize them, they aren't really miscellaneous.

jacobs

@Leslie Jones First, I'd note that many of the thousands of Quicken users who have previously migrated from Quicken 2007 to the modern Quicken have compiled a long list of feature requests for the developers over the past 5 years since the re-written Quicken debuted. Many have been tackled; many more remain on the collective wishlist. You can review many of them by perusing the Product Ideas-Quicken for Mac category on this forum. Be sure to add your vote to any of the ideas you think are desirable!

Leslie Jones said:

1) Can't use up/down arrows to advance through categories unless the list is already showing

Just type the first couple letters in the Category field; that generates a list, and you can then use the arrow keys -- although I've found clicking is often faster than using the keyboard.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see any advantage to scrolling through the entire category list; unless the category begins with "a", down-arrow to pick a category from a list of 100+ categories just doesn't seem useful. Even in Quicken 2007, I would always type a few letters.

Leslie Jones said:

2) Can't add clear when entering a transaction to make all fields blank

I'm not sure what you mean "can't add Clear." If you mean you want to select a Payee but not have Quicken auto-fill all the other fields, use a trick that was carried over from Quicken 2007: press Option-Tab to exit the Payee field. This retains the Payee, but blanks everything else. I use this all the time. (I don't think it's documented anywhere! )

Leslie Jones said:

3) Have to manually categorize auto downloads. example: My pay deposit self categorizes as "Personal Income". I use "Salary:Net". I should be able to make a rule that automatically changes "Personal Income" to Salary: Net".

Auto-categorization defaults to using Quicken's categories. You can turn off auto-categorization in Quicken Preferences > Connected Services by unchecking the box for "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories." After doing this, Quicken should re-use the category you used most recently for the same Payee. You may find that turning this off results in undesirable results, but you can try it.

But to your point, the developers have said they are working on new functionality to allow something similar to memorized transactions in Quicken 2007. We don't know when this will be released, only that it's a work-in-progress.

Leslie Jones said:

4) Transfer accounts doesn't show up on list unless I retype Transfer. Again, no up/down arrow function

It sounds like you may not have the Transfer column visible in your registers. Make this column visible (click on the Columns icon on the bottom toolbar, then check Transfer from the list of available columns), and you don't need to type "Transfer". As with categories, you need to start typing before you can use arrow keys for selection, but you only need one character be able to arrow through a list ; however,r I think you'll find in most cases, typing one or two characters will give you the account you want, with no need to arrow through a list.

Leslie Jones said:

5) doesn't highlight when tabing to any field. I have to manually highlight to change.

Hmmm. Quicken highlights each field when you tab to it, so deleting pre-filled content is as simple as typing something new or pressing Delete is you want it to be blank. I'm not sure why you aren't experiencing this.

Leslie Jones said:

6) If I enter a new transaction for 9/30/19, when I select "new" again it defaults to another date, every time. It should default to the last date I entered so I can advance using +/- more easily or do more transactions with the same date.

Sometimes it retains the same date; it generally does for me. But other users have noted that it doesn't always. I'm curious: are you adding new transactions at the top or bottom of your register? (Top is the default for modern Quicken; bottom is the way Quicken 2007 worked.) 

Leslie Jones said:

None of this is rocket science. It makes Q for Mac2019 much more time consuming than necessary. If there is someplace I should post this list where maybe some Quicken for MAC person would see it let me know.

You're right; it's not rocket science; it's programming. And the list of feature requests from users is still far ahead of the capacity of the (small) development team to implement all the requests. The good news is that progress has been steadily made over the past 5 years; the bad news is that any user's favorite feature may not have been yet implemented. (I'm still longing for QuickMath from Quicken 2007!)

Leslie Jones

Thanks very much @Jacobs for always responding so quickly. I will try some of your suggestions and report back here.
One of the reasons the auto fill up/down Arrow thing affects me would be I have many sub categories. And perhaps what is happening is I need to turn auto fill off. For Misc.: I have a dozen subcategories. Q2007 used to allow me to up/down without having to type since Misc was already there. I don’t mind having to type Misc again but I shouldn’t have to. And I prefer to stay on my KB whenever possible as going to the mouse to scroll down takes more time for me. Perhaps not for others. thanks again.

jacobs

@Leslie Jones For Misc with a bunch of subcategories, you should be able to just type "Mi" and then use the down arrow to choose the appropriate subcategory.

But I rarely use the arrow keys; if I'm doing entry just from the keyboard, I find it faster to type what I need. So if you have, for instance, Misc:Cash as a category and subcategory, you can type "Mi:C" or "Mi:Ca" and get what you want -- those extra 2 or 3 keystrokes are probably fewer strokes and faster than a bunch of down arrows.

A tangential bit of advice: I'm sure what you have for your categories works for you, but an accountant would likely tell you that if you have recurring transactions in 12 subcategories of Misc., those aren't really "Misc." at all, and should be put in their own categories or subcategories of existing categories. I'm not sure what sort of Misc. expense you have, but do they really not fall under food/dining, charitable contributions, home repairs, etc.?  Put another way, miscellaneous expenses, sort of by definition, shouldn't typically have a lot of subcategories, because if you can categorize them, they aren't really miscellaneous.

Leslie Jones

I had no idea I could just type in a few of the letters and get to what I wanted. I’ll try that. It would solve the arrow thing for the time being. as to Misc.: yes that category grew I used to use it for things I didn’t use all the time. But now there are subcategories I use all the time. If I stick with Q2019 I might change that up. It has little to do with my accountant though as he only sees a printout of my quicken for reference. Thanks again @Jacobs.

Leslie Jones

> Leslie Jones said:
>
> 6) If I enter a new transaction for 9/30/19, when I select "new" again it defaults to another date, every time. It should default to the last date I entered so I can advance using +/- more easily or do more transactions with the same date.

Jacobs
Sometimes it retains the same date; it generally does for me. But other users have noted that it doesn't always. I'm curious: are you adding new transactions at the top or bottom of your register? (Top is the default for modern Quicken; bottom is the way Quicken 2007 worked.)

ME
This is still not working. Doesn't matter if I am adding from the top or the bottom. The date reverts to whatever the first date was I typed when I opened the session that time.

Charles Stillman

The lack of Quickmath will keep me using Quicken 2007 forever. This is REALLY important. No, I'm not interested in bank statement downloads. Please give me the tools I need. Does the latest version allow me to reassign keyboard shortcuts. I just re assigned CMD-A to open my AppleCard register. Can the new version do that?

jacobs

@Charles Stillman I'm another longtime Quicken Mac user who has been lobbying for QuickMath in the modern Quicken since its start. Please jump to this thread, scroll to the blue box under the first post, and click the little gray triangle under the vote counter to register your vote for this feature. With over 100 votes now (101 legacy + 15 in the counter as I write this) it's gotten each critical mass that hopefully the developers will move this up the priority list.

As for re-assigning keyboard commands, this is not built into the modern Quicken. But in this case, that's not a bad thing -- because it's built into macOS now. In System Preferences > Keyboard, click on the Shortcuts tab, then App Shortcuts on the left side. Click the + icon, and then you can define a keyboard shortcut for all programs or a specific program; you'd select Quicken.app from the Application menu.

The problem with creating a keyboard shortcut for a Quicken account is that the Accounts don't typically show up as menu items, so you can't create new shortcuts for them. I will say that in Quicken 2007, I had all my accounts stored as keyboard shortcuts so I could open them, but I've found having them all visible in the left sidebar works equally well for me to click on awn account; I don't miss have g a keyboard shortcut for each account.

(That said, if you really wanted to, there's sort of a way to do it. If you double click on an account in the left sidebar, it will open ion its own window. And that window then shows up at the bottom of the Windows menu. So you could define a shortcut for that menu item. As long as you have the window for this account open -- even if it's hidden behind the main window -- you can access if via a command key shortcut. But if you close the separate window for an account, then the keyboard shortcut won't work. So for this technique to work, you need to open each account in its own window and leave them open; the command key shortcuts you create can switch among them.)