How to "RETIRE" certain categories (NOT "accounts" - CATEGORIES)

tntgalx10

Because I think somehow this is confusing to Quicken the company (or do they just not care?...), I will give a real example of what is going on, so it can be FIXED or someone can please show me some miraculous way to fix it that I'm not seeing (I've used Quicken desktop software since the 90s....)

I've owned a few houses, and have sold a few houses. So - for instance, here's a category (and a sub-category, to make the point) that was applicable 5 years ago, but now that 123 Lovely Lane house is sold, I will never need this category ever to "pop up" as a suggestion when I'm manually categorizing some transactions now, in the present day, for my present house:

123 Lovely Lane:Home Repair & Maintenance

So here we are in 2020, and I have my current house and sub-category, that I DO want to pop up as a suggestion when I start typing "Home Repa....." in the category field. Couple things: no, I don't want to have to type "555 Great Lane" and then arrow-key down to the right subcategory of Home Repair & Maintenance." I would then have to still wade through ALL of my previous homes to get to my CURRENT home of 123 Lovely Lane.

If I only ever had one house, 123 Lovely Lane, obviously this would never be an issue. I would start to type "Home Repai..." and there the "123 Lovely Lane:Home Repair & Maintenance" would be! And I hit the ENTER (or TAB) key and I'm done.

Please don't suggest auto-categorizing a Vendor/Store/whatever via "memorized payee" list to automatically use the category "555 Great Lane:Home Repair & Maintenance," because MOST times my transactions are "split" in that there are different categories within the 1 transaction (i.e., Home Depot $100 charge... $75 of that $100 might be "555 Great Lane:Home Repair & Maintenance" category, $25 might be "Household Goods" category having nothing to do with my home address). There's a million other examples of why memorized payee feature is not appropriate as a solution, but the bottom line is... "hiding" a category (via Tools > Category List, and then ticking the box to the right of any given category or sub-category under the column "Hide"), should actually HIDE a category from being a pop-up in the category filling process for a transaction. And if it is not, then there needs to be some "retire" feature to select or any category and/or subcategory.

And yea - if egg is on my face, someone please, PLEASE point it out and tell me exactly how to get this simple thing done.

Thanks!

NotACPA

never mind, you'd already answered my question.

And, other than deleting them, there's currently no way to Retire a category.

NotACPA

How about editing the names of those categories so that they all start with ZZZ, so that they'd at least sort to the bottom of the list?

splasher

I think the mistake is in making individual categories for each property.  If you had created a single category with the needed subcategories and then used a TAG for each property, then you would have not created a bunch of categories that you would need to retire.

To get from old to new structure, you could create the necessary TAGs, apply them to all of the transactions appropriately and then merge the many different categories to the single category structure.

Personally, I have gone thru several cars, but I only have one Auto:Fuel, but I can track the fuel costs of all of my vehicles individually because each vehicle has its own TAG.

TAGs are very useful for this sort of situation.

tntgalx10

> @NotACPA said:
> How about editing the names of those categories so that they all start with ZZZ, so that they'd at least sort to the bottom of the list?

Thanks, I appreciate it. Yea, deleting is not an option (the old categories are still needed, they are associated with many past transactions).

tntgalx10

> @splasher said:
> I think the mistake is in making individual categories for each property.  If you had created a single category with the needed subcategories and then used a TAG for each property, then you would have not created a bunch of categories that you would need to retire.To get from old to new structure, you could create the necessary TAGs, apply them to all of the transactions appropriately and then merge the many different categories to the single category structure.Personally, I have gone thru several cars, but I only have one Auto:Fuel, but I can track the fuel costs of all of my vehicles individually because each vehicle has its own TAG.TAGs are very useful for this sort of situation.

That's a great idea in theory (and will work for a lot of similar situations, thanks)... But the Tag solution doesn't work when it comes to the Tax Line Item associations I have for the categories (I. E., a rental property's Home Repair & Maintenence category has a different tax correlation than a primary home, etc.. And that will wreck havoc on import).

It really is just a power user feature that should absolutely be there (and Quicken needs to really care about the power users.... We are their true bread and butter.....)

splasher

Okay, so you have two category structures, one tax related, the other not tax related. 

I don't see this a matter of "power user" versus average yokle, but I bet they sell more copies to the yokles than the "power users".

If you think Quicken needs this feature, start another post and make it an "idea" for DEV to consider.

tntgalx10

Thanks. But my comment was more about my original issue. I think I described it pretty intricately... And there are so, so many more issues in my head with Quicken... Which unfairly played into my power user/Quicken not being upgraded comment.

tntgalx10

... And my head hurts, and I'm tired of 2020 [Removed-Disruptive]

Boatnmaniac

@tntgalx10 - Hidden categories in the Category List will continue to be available for transaction categories selection if you have the "Show hidden categories" box checked.  If that box is unchecked the hidden categories should not be showing up as available for selection, even if you try typing the hidden category in the transaction.

Are you saying you have the "Show hidden categories" unchecked and the hidden categories still are available for selection in transactions?