How do you easily switching many items from uncategorized to a category?

Abbyjen

Ok... I had a subcategory that I tried to merge with new subcategory that was empty. It did not move. All I had was the new subcategory that said it was unused... so I deleted it. Then, I found that my original subcategory was gone... along with all the data. All that data has been moved to Uncategorized. How do I easily move all of that back to my subcategory without running a category report & doing it a line at a time. :( Please help!

jacobs

First, it sounds like you might be better off restoring a backup, assuming you have Quicken make automatic backups or you have a Time Machine file you can restore form before you did this.

Next, for the future: Let's say you have Main category "A" and subcategory "a", and main Category "B" with subcategory "b", and you want to merge subcategories "a" and "b" under main category "B". Move the existing subcategory "a" out to be its own main category; just drag it up and to the left so you see a line under the current main category, then release. Now, drag that category "a" onto main category B, and you should see it drop in as a subcategory of "B". Now that the subcategories "a" and "b" are together under one main category, click on them both and merge them.

Now to your question… If you are unable to revert to a backup, you can select a bunch of uncategorized transactions and categorize them all at once -- with one caveat. This only works for transactions without splits; there is current no way to do search & replace that extends within splits. (I keep hoping they will address that shortcoming.)

Click on the account, or if this extends across multiple account, on the group or subgroup (e.g. Cash, Credit Card, Banking) in the left sidebar. Type Uncategorized into the Search box. Now you want to select the ones you want to change to a specific category. If it's all the uncategorized transactions, just press Comnand-A to Select All. More likely, it's not all of them. You can select a contiguous group of transactions by clicking on the first one and then Shift-Clicking on the last one; you can select dis-contiguous transactions by Command-Clicking on each one you want and skipping over ones you don't. (If you're doing this and you have a long list, you might want to do it in chunks of 10, 15 or 20 transactions at a time, because it's easy to mis-click and lose your selected set.) Once you have a group of transactions selected, go to Transactions > Edit Transaction (or command-E) and the Transaction Info window will open. Click on the Category field and either type or select from he drop-down list the category you want. Click OK, and those transactions will all have the new category.

Try selecting 2 or 3 transactions the first time you do this, just to see it work and make sure it's doing what you want. Also, if you mess up, remember you can Undo one or more times to undo your work.

jacobs

First, it sounds like you might be better off restoring a backup, assuming you have Quicken make automatic backups or you have a Time Machine file you can restore form before you did this.

Next, for the future: Let's say you have Main category "A" and subcategory "a", and main Category "B" with subcategory "b", and you want to merge subcategories "a" and "b" under main category "B". Move the existing subcategory "a" out to be its own main category; just drag it up and to the left so you see a line under the current main category, then release. Now, drag that category "a" onto main category B, and you should see it drop in as a subcategory of "B". Now that the subcategories "a" and "b" are together under one main category, click on them both and merge them.

Now to your question… If you are unable to revert to a backup, you can select a bunch of uncategorized transactions and categorize them all at once -- with one caveat. This only works for transactions without splits; there is current no way to do search & replace that extends within splits. (I keep hoping they will address that shortcoming.)

Click on the account, or if this extends across multiple account, on the group or subgroup (e.g. Cash, Credit Card, Banking) in the left sidebar. Type Uncategorized into the Search box. Now you want to select the ones you want to change to a specific category. If it's all the uncategorized transactions, just press Comnand-A to Select All. More likely, it's not all of them. You can select a contiguous group of transactions by clicking on the first one and then Shift-Clicking on the last one; you can select dis-contiguous transactions by Command-Clicking on each one you want and skipping over ones you don't. (If you're doing this and you have a long list, you might want to do it in chunks of 10, 15 or 20 transactions at a time, because it's easy to mis-click and lose your selected set.) Once you have a group of transactions selected, go to Transactions > Edit Transaction (or command-E) and the Transaction Info window will open. Click on the Category field and either type or select from he drop-down list the category you want. Click OK, and those transactions will all have the new category.

Try selecting 2 or 3 transactions the first time you do this, just to see it work and make sure it's doing what you want. Also, if you mess up, remember you can Undo one or more times to undo your work.