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How do I delete memorized transactions from the Payee field in Check Writing Window?

Marketing Guru

When I write a check, the dropdown for Payee contains a HUGE number of choices. None of these are in my memorized Payee list. How do I get rid of them?

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Quicken Francisco

Hello @Marketing Guru

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue. I do apologize for the issue you're having. I'm wondering here are you by chance using Direct connect bill pay or are you writing checks I did notice that when writing checks it would normally use the memorized payee list but if you're using Direct connect it'll instead use your online payee list I believe. If you are using DC I would double check there to see if you may be able to clean up the list.

If not let us know some more details on if you're printing/payment method and we'll take a look and see what we're able to find.

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

Marketing Guru

I think all the accounts are Express Web Connect and I do not use any sort of Direct Bill Pay. I think you are misunderstanding the problem.

The screenshot below is what I see when I go to write any check and pick the drop down list for Payee. None of those entries exist in the memorized transaction list. There are are probably at least 60 of them like that. I cannot delete them directly from the dropdown list either (selecting one and hitting delete does nothing). How do I clean this mess up?

Quicken Check Writing Dialog.png

Sherlock

I suggest you rebuild the Memorized Payee List: https://www.quicken.com/support/error-memorized-transaction-list-full-or-memorized-transactions-stop-working

Marketing Guru

OK I did the Validate and then the Rebuild. It threw up all those transactions that were not in any list. So I deleted all the ones I didn't want which was a lot of work with some 60 unwanted buggers. For grins or because I am stupid, I did the Rebuild thing again and they all came back plus MORE. WHAT IS GOING ON? I suppose I can SUPER VALIDATE and do it again but if Quicken keeps re-adding transactions to the file I'm not sure what I can do next. The file I am working on has been super-validated in the past and is a COPY itself.

I do NOT have auto-memorize turned on. I have auto-remove memorized payees (after 7 months) turned on. Most of the reappearing memorized payees are more than 2 years old. Some are more than 6 years old.

Sherlock

Marketing Guru said:

OK I did the Validate and then the Rebuild. It threw up all those transactions that were not in any list. So I deleted all the ones I didn't want which was a lot of work with some 60 unwanted buggers. For grins or because I am stupid, I did the Rebuild thing again and they all came back plus MORE. WHAT IS GOING ON? I suppose I can SUPER VALIDATE and do it again but if Quicken keeps re-adding transactions to the file I'm not sure what I can do next. The file I am working on has been super-validated in the past and is a COPY itself.

I do NOT have auto-memorize turned on. I have auto-remove memorized payees (after 7 months) turned on. Most of the reappearing memorized payees are more than 2 years old. Some are more than 6 years old.

What do you mean by It threw up all those transactions that were not in any list and Quicken keeps re-adding transactions to the file ?

Before attempting to restore a Quicken file backup (or open an earlier copy of the Quicken File), I suggest deleting the Quicken Cloud dataset (aka cloud account) associated with the Quicken file. Note: You need to open another Quicken file to delete the appropriate cloud account. You may want to review: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-edit-or-delete-your-cloud-datasets-quicken-windows

This other Quicken file needs to have a distinct file identifier so that we may delete the cloud account associated with the original Quicken file. For example, you may create a new Quicken file (select File > New Quicken File...) without any accounts, enable sync in preferences so you may view and delete the cloud account associated with the original Quicken file.

This is necessary because when we open or restore an another version of the Quicken file with the same file identifier, Quicken is not resetting the cloud account appropriately at this time. I hope they will let us know when they have addressed this issue, but for now before opening another Quicken file that has the same file identifier embedded, delete the cloud account.

Note: Only File > New Quicken File... generates a distinct file identifier. All other forms of creating Quicken file, copy the embedded identifier from another file.

Marketing Guru

What I meant was that when I did the Rebuild Memorized Payee action (Tools - CTRL-SHIFT-Memorized Payee List), it comes up with all sorts of transactions (aka Payees) that weren't showing up in the Memorized Payee List itself (when you don't use the CTRL-SHIFT thing). Interestingly, ALL of them are "locked".

I do not use a Quicken Cloud account so there is nothing to muck with there. All my backups are on hard drives (networked and local).

I appreciate your thoughts BTW.

Sherlock

Marketing Guru said:

What I meant was that when I did the Rebuild Memorized Payee action (Tools - CTRL-SHIFT-Memorized Payee List), it comes up with all sorts of transactions (aka Payees) that weren't showing up in the Memorized Payee List itself (when you don't use the CTRL-SHIFT thing). Interestingly, ALL of them are "locked".

I do not use a Quicken Cloud account so there is nothing to muck with there. All my backups are on hard drives (networked and local).

I appreciate your thoughts BTW.

Unfortunately, Quicken does synchronize some data in a Quicken file with a cloud account even when we have never enabled Sync and have never selected any accounts to be sync'd.

Marketing Guru

OK, I did as you said. Created TEST with one cash account in it. Let it sync to Quicken. Found the dataset for the current problem file. Deleted it. Re-opened the problem file. I couldn't see any of the problem transactions in the MPL. Went to write a check. They were ALL there in the dropdown. I tried doing the rebuild thing AGAIN. Deleted a bunch of them. Write a check. No good in fact there were even MORE transactions / PAYEEs in the dropdown. It makes the dropdown for writing checks useless. And yes, Quicken created a new dataset for the problem file with same name as the problem file.

I guess my next adventure is Quicken Tech Support.

Marketing Guru

I will add that when it's creating these memorized payees, they were NEVER memorized by me. In fact, I have all that auto-memorize stuff turned off so the only time Quicken should memorize something is if I specifically do it. It just creates new ones out of thin air from transactions that are everything from relatively recent to extremely old (10 years).

Sherlock

Marketing Guru said:

OK, I did as you said. Created TEST with one cash account in it. Let it sync to Quicken. Found the dataset for the current problem file. Deleted it. Re-opened the problem file. I couldn't see any of the problem transactions in the MPL. Went to write a check. They were ALL there in the dropdown. I tried doing the rebuild thing AGAIN. Deleted a bunch of them. Write a check. No good in fact there were even MORE transactions / PAYEEs in the dropdown. It makes the dropdown for writing checks useless. And yes, Quicken created a new dataset for the problem file with same name as the problem file.

I guess my next adventure is Quicken Tech Support.

I think you should rebuild the Memorized Payee List and delete the Cloud Account. Then, you should be able to delete memorized payees and the deleted memorized payees should not appear on the payee pull-down menus. If this is not what you are experiencing, I suspect the Quicken file is corrupt. If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://www.quicken.com/support/advanced-data-file-troubleshooting-correct-problems-quicken-windows