I cant adjust the column widths on reports (Q Mac)

josephdisanto

when i do a report, the column of info is jammed against the categories. I cant slide it out, only in. Someone else asked about this, and they were told it was because they were using old reports, but I am not. Are the column widths not adjustable. Its very herd to look the default spacing.

jacobs

Correct, on these columnar reports you can't drag the Category column width wider than the longest category name. (Most people complain if there is too much space between the text and the numbers, because it's hard to keep your eyes straight looking across rows if there's a lot of white space.)

I suppose you could experiment with creating a long category name to force the column to be wider. It would need to be a frequently-used category that would show up in all your reports. Quicken prevents you from saving category names with trailing spaces or non-breaking spaces (Option-spacebar), but you could create a category name that's intentionally quite long, something like:

    Other Income:Income Earned..................................

If having this one category with all the periods at the end would bother you less than having the column closer together, this might be a way to achieve what you want.

If you want more control over formatting, you could click the Export link and open the file in Excel or Numbers, where you have infinite control over column widths, line spacing, font size, etc.

jacobs

Which report type is it?

The old reports, which date back to 2010 Quicken Essentials, do not have adjustable columns. That's one of many reasons the developers have built a new reports engine and user interface, and are moving to eventually eliminate the old reports once the new ones can completely replace them.

If you're using a Category Summary report, I'd suggest trying either a Transaction or Summary report. These are among the new reports, and you can add/hide columns, change column order, change column width, change sort oder, and do a number of other things the old reports can't. 

The Tax Schedule report is one of the old reports that can't be replicated with any new report, but I'm not aware of spacing problems because it has limited columns.

josephdisanto

its one of the new summary reports in green. cash flow. see attached spacing. I can drag the line (separating the categories and totals) only to the left.

jacobs

Ah, yes, I see -- well, partly.

This report layout is designed so there can be more than one column of numbers. If you change the date range to start on 1/1/18, for instance, and change the Interval filter to "Year", you'll see a column for each year and a total.

But back to your issue, I'm looking at the screen shot you attached, and there's no place where the text and the column of numbers are too close to each other and hard to read. I'm not seeing what you're describing where the column of numbers is jammed against the categories.

To test something, I created a really long category name, created a transaction using it, and then checked the report. As I suspected, the width of the category column automatically increased to accommodate the long category name.

Here's a screenshot of a piece of a Cash Summary Report showing two subcategories of my Auto expense category:


Now here it is when I added a long category name:



Notice that the report automatically widened the Category column to accommodate the longest category name.

Of course, you can grab the number column and pull it to the left if, you don't mind truncating the category names:



…but its default is to give all the space the category names require.

So perhaps I'm not understanding where you're experiencing a problem. To me, this appears to work quite well. 

josephdisanto

it's just a matter of preference. I would like to be able to put more space between the categories and the numbers because I personally find it difficult to look at, with them so close. But it seems to be the case that you cannot make that adjustment?

jacobs

Correct, on these columnar reports you can't drag the Category column width wider than the longest category name. (Most people complain if there is too much space between the text and the numbers, because it's hard to keep your eyes straight looking across rows if there's a lot of white space.)

I suppose you could experiment with creating a long category name to force the column to be wider. It would need to be a frequently-used category that would show up in all your reports. Quicken prevents you from saving category names with trailing spaces or non-breaking spaces (Option-spacebar), but you could create a category name that's intentionally quite long, something like:

    Other Income:Income Earned..................................

If having this one category with all the periods at the end would bother you less than having the column closer together, this might be a way to achieve what you want.

If you want more control over formatting, you could click the Export link and open the file in Excel or Numbers, where you have infinite control over column widths, line spacing, font size, etc.