How can the width of the investment "description" be changed?

FrankYoung

Investment accounts have a FIXED width "description" entry. I cannot change the width of this entry. The content of this entry is the "category" of the transaction. This value is only visible when the transaction is selected. Why?

Tom Young

"The content of this entry is the 'category' of the transaction."

I don't understand that sentence.  You start off in your post talking about the "Description" field of an Account.  But then you refer to "this entry" which in the context of the first sentence would seem to be whatever you typed into the Description field, but then refer to Categories and some "transaction." 

Are you saying that when you enter a transaction in your investment Account that the Category associated with that transaction, e.g., "Div" replaces whatever you originally typed into the Account's Description field?  And it seems like what's in that field is changing as you select different transactions?

Chris_QPW

In truth the "Description" is used for many different things depending on the transactions action type.

The Description field can be resized, but it has a minimum size that is rather large.  I think you will find that you can in fact expand it, but you are wanting to reduce it below that minimum size and it will not let you.

There have been many request over the years for the developers to allow a smaller limit, but it has never been changed.

On the displaying of the "second line".  There is an option in the investment accounts to display in one or two line mode.  When you are in one line mode all, but the selected transactions show only one line and try to cram that information into that line.  The line that is selected will always show in two line mode because you are in "edit mode".

Edit -> Preferences -> Investment transactions -> List display

@Tom Young As for the category reference, when an investment transaction has a category it will be displayed under the Description column.

FrankYoung

My transaction display has entries labeled "Clr", "Date", "Action", "Security" (all in Bold) and Description, Share Bal, Inv Amt, Cash Amt, and Cash Bal. Yes, the Description entry is the category. But I have no idea why the category is not visible until that transaction is selected. Also, I have no idea why the width of this entry cannot be changed - it is just too wide and much of the important data (the data on the extreme right) is not visible in the window - even when it is maximized. One must continually go to the right to see important data. And using a two-line display does not help because the width of the "description" entry is so very wide and unchangeable..

FrankYoung

PS. When a transaction is downloaded the description entry is either loaded with Quickens guess as to the category or left blank. When I try to change the data in the entry I cannot.

FrankYoung

@Chris_QPW Yes I can expand the size for this item but as you say it is very large, even when made as small as possible. Strange that the many requests for allowing a normal change in size (permitted for ALL other entries) have been ignored. Also strange that Quicken is putting things in this entry (using undefined rules that appear to be kept secret) that are invisible to the user unless that transaction is highlighted.

Chris_QPW

FrankYoung said:

 Also strange that Quicken is putting things in this entry (using undefined rules that appear to be kept secret) that are invisible to the user unless that transaction is highlighted.

They aren't "invisible" if you are in two line mode.  That part of it makes sense.  With the extra space of the two lines they can put in the extra information that won't fit in one line mode.

FrankYoung

They are not invisible when they are not categories, but when Quicken has assigned a category to an investment transaction (which it does!) then that category is NOT visible when one is in either display mode.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @FrankYoung

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your issue, although I apologize that you haven't received a follow-up response.

May I ask that you capture a screenshot of the issue that you are seeing? To capture a screenshot, I would recommend using the Snipping Tool.

Once you have the screenshot, please drag the image into the comment box to upload the image.

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka