Cannot turn off automatic categorization

waltsyd

I have gone into Edit/Preferences/Downloaded Transactions and unchecked "Automatically categorize transactions". I still get automatic categories (some of which are wrong). So I also go into Tools/Memorized Payee List and check "Never Auto-categorize". I still get automatic categorizations! Not sure what else to do.

Jim_Harman

Try deleting the Category from the memorized payee. In my experiments I did not also have to lock the memorized payee, but you might try that too.

Boatnmaniac

You might also want to go to Edit > Preferences > Data Entry and Quickfill.  If the box for Complete fields using previous entries is checked, uncheck it.

GaryinSC

Windows version incorrectly fills fields from previous transactions. Mainly category. It used to be empty but now is always populated and almost always wrong. I used to use the empty Category field to prompt me to select the correct category but now it is a constant guessing game as to whether I have checked it or not. Automatic categorization is unchecked

Chris_QPW

There could be a bug here, but even looking at the answers suggested tells me that there are some misconceptions on what triggers filling in the category.

When downloading transactions this preference isn't used:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20207080#Comment_20207080

That only applies to manual entry.

The main thing that controls this is the Memorized Payee list, if a downloaded payee matches a payee in that list and that payee isn't set to "Never Auto-Categorize" you are going to get whatever category is in the payee entry. There isn't any preference that turns this part off.

Next up if the downloaded payee doesn't match a payee in the Memorized Payee list it then looks to see if the "Automatically categorize transactions" setting is on.

And lastly, I will mention that if one has Sync to Mobile/Web on it is possible that automatic categorization might come through that.

The Mobile/Web interface has no "do not categorize" setting, and it does do automatic categorization, so even though I have never dug into it enough to say one way or another I can certainly see the possibility that the transaction could be categorized in that way and then synced down to the Desktop data file. Note, that the Mobile/Web are mostly GUIs for the "Quicken Connection Services". As in a server where the data is stored (the Quicken Cloud dataset). And that server periodically downloads transactions and such. It would most likely be what is actually doing the automatic categorization of these transactions that are downloading into the Quicken Cloud dataset. And as such it will be using the "server database", and maybe your memorized payee list.

EDIT: Note for me I have "Automatically categorize transactions" off, and don't use Sync to Mobile/Web and this is the behavior I see:

I have an Amazon payee that (through renaming rules) is AMZN Mktp, I have the following entry in the Memorized Payee List, and it always downloads with a blank category (check box is not to do automatic categorization):

I also get a blank category for new downloaded payees.