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Is there a way to bulk edit the Actions field in transactions? (Q Mac)

kv0rmwald

You can bulk edit Payees, Categories, Tags, Notes, etc. by editing a group of transactions but it doesn't appear that I can bulk edit (e.g., delete DEBIT or CREDIT) actions without modifying each transaction separately. Also, does QMac automatically assign an Action such that even if I wanted to just use an Action for a limited set of transactions (e.g., EFT), the CREDIT and DEBIT Actions would just reappear anyway on new transactions?

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Accepted answers

jacobs

The Action field in Quicken Mac is purely cosmetic. If you want to enter actions, you can, but they're nothing more than labels on the transactions; they don't trigger any action in Quicken, and Quicken doesn't automatically enter anything into the Action field.

There's really no reason to label transactions as CREDIT or DEBIT, since there are likely other ways you can search, sort of report on such transactions. If you wanted to label certain transactions as EFT, so that you could later Search for all EFT transactions, that might be a valid use for someone.

You are correct that the Transaction Info screen, which is used for bulk editing of fields, ignores the Action column, and so there's no way to bulk edit them. Similarly, Action is not one too the fields you (or Quicken) can define in a QuickFill rule, so you can't even specify a certain Action for every future transaction for a specific Payee. And the Actions window didn't receive any updates to be able to be merged or show how many times they are in use, like other windows (Payees, Categories, Securities and Tags) did in a recent update. I'd guess in all these cases, Actions were either overlooked or thought to be something very few people used.

I simply leave the Action column hidden, as it is by default, and don't use it. Although I used to record a few actions in Quicken 2007, I never really used them, and don't miss it at all.

All comments

jacobs

I simply leave the Action column hidden, as it is by default, and don't use it. Although I used to record a few actions in Quicken 2007, I never really used them, and don't miss it at all.

jacobs

Sorry, my mistake about that auto-enter aspect, and thanks for the correction, @RickO . Most of my transactions have either been imported from Quicken 2007 or entered manually, so I don't see a lot of those things.

What the difference between TXFR and XFER?

How does it determine if an ATM deposit is ATM or DEP or DEBIT? Or if an ATM withdrawal is ATM or CASH or CREDIT?

kv0rmwald

Thanks for the helpful discussion. It pretty much confirms the behavior I am seeing. I too wasn't thinking that I'd make a lot of use of this Action field, but it could be helpful in a few cases such as for EFTs or also identifying credit card or loan payments without using the Notes field. I originally suspected that the existing Actions were one-time created when I migrated from the PC Quicken to Mac Quicken. So I thought if I could bulk edit clean those up, I could begin to use the Action field as desired. But then I noticed that I was seeing CREDIT and DEBIT show up on very recent downloaded transactions from my bank. So then it hit me that even if I could do a one-time bulk cleanup, I'd have to diligently keep doing that after every download in order to keep the undesired Actions from reappearing. And I'd agree that the cost outweighs the benefit. I've been just using Tags instead.

kv0rmwald

Thanks Rick, I discovered that neat trick myself and was just about to mention it here for others. That did work for my objective which was to eliminate all of the CREDIT and DEBIT Actions to get a "clean slate" to start back from. And I'm hoping that even if new CREDIT and DEBIT Actions show up via downloaded transactions, that QMac will add them back into the list of Actions from which I can periodically easily remove them. Not the best solution, but it will work for my needs. Thanks again for the discussion.

mybank2002

jacobs said:

What the difference between TXFR and XFER? How does it determine if an ATM deposit is ATM or DEP or DEBIT? Or if an ATM withdrawal is ATM or CASH or CREDIT?

Cool glad to see the action window was mentioned. Regarding the difference between TXRF and XFER I just switched from Quicken for Windows so I don't know if the same rules apply but when I would use Quicken to transfer money between accounts and have it do that for me on my bank then it would put in XFER so basically between your own accounts. It would do TXFR automatically when I would transfer between my other bank accounts. This mark helped with reports and not calculated as income or an expense. I would imagine that would be the same in Quicken for Mac but based on the reply from @jacobs of them being nothing more than cosmetic it sounds like that might not be the case on Mac.

I have started using this field for a note to talk to my wife about certain transactions but as mentioned above you could just use tags for this sort of thing.

kv0rmwald

I too recently switched from Quicken for Windows to the Mac version. I haven't noticed QMac doing anything with TXFR or XFER Actions with respect to my bank transfers. But I did notice another quirk in that for some transfer transactions, like making a payment by transferring money from the bank checking account to the same bank's credit card account, QMac may not let you set the Action field on both sides of the transfer. You can set the field on one side of the transfer, but on the other side you get a message that it's a transfer that can't be edited at this side and it points you to the origination of the transfer to make any edits. Except any change made to the Action field on the originating side of the transfer isn't carried over to the other side of the transfer. So I've been mainly using Tags as they are also bulk-editable if I change my mind.