The memo column in my Transaction Report is showing unrelated words from Pages

Kay Kibby

The words are about the first 10 letters from several paragraphs in an old 2021 draft in Pages. Even deleting the old Pages file didn't get rid of this. Has anyone else experienced this?

jacobs

Thanks for attaching the visual. I continue to believe these memos are attached to transactions; there's just space or returns making them spend onto multiple lines. 

So I want you to please check the 5/16/21 transaction. I believe the text you're seeing is several paragraphs or lines of information in either the main Memo field or the Splits Note field. 

I just tried to create a test of this. I created some simple text similar to yours in TextEdit:

I then did Select All, Copy and pasted this into the Memo field of a transaction. And here's a report with that one transaction similar to yours:


And there it is!

So I remain convinced a block of text was accidentally pasted into the Memo or Notes field of one of your transactions, probably your 5/16/21 transaction shown in your image. Open that transaction, and click in the Memo/Notes field. Do you see this, with the word Note in gray:


or do you see this, with just white in the Memo/Notes field



The first one is what you'd see in the Memo/Notes field is empty. The second is what you'd see in the Memo/Notes field with the multiple lines of text pasted in. If you see the latter, click in the field and press Command-A, followed by Delete to select all the text and remove it.

If the main Memo/Notes field is already blank, then the pasted in text is in the Splits Notes field: click Edit Details and then the Splits tab. Look at the Notes field on the right side of the top split line. If you see "Notes" in gray, the field is empty; if it is all white, there is text in there which is out of view. If it's white, click in the field and press Command-A, followed by Delete to select all the text and remove it.

Once you remove the text hidden in one of those Notes fields, you can run your report again. Onscreen it will look the same, but when you print it, the extra lines will be gone. 

Jon

I haven't, no. Are you storing your Quicken file in iCloud? Or in a directory that's synced to iCloud?

jacobs

Is this on just one transaction? Several? A lot? If more than one, is it for the same Payee, or different Payees?

If it's just one, I would guess you had highlighted and copied the text while using Pages, and while in Quicken you inadvertently did a paste. Can you edit the transaction in Quicken and delete the text from the Memo column?

If it's more than one transaction but for the same Payee, you should go to Window > Payees & Rules > QuickFill Rules for this Payee, to see if the transaction including this text in the memo field got saved as a QuickenFill rule. If so, delete the QuickFill rule or edit it to remove the text in the Memo field.

Kay Kibby

Oddly, these lines in the Memo column do not appear opposite any transaction. There are 6 "floating" memo lines from a single Pages doc, and 2 other memo lines from somewhere else I can't identify. I can't delete them because they do not appear in the register - they only show up when I print a Transaction Report. So it's not really the end of the world, but it is a peculiar mystery.

Kay Kibby

Thank you Jon...I am not storing my backups in iCloud.

jacobs

@Kay Kibby Could you try looking at something in your data? Pick one of the transactions where you're seeing a memo line only on the transaction report. Double-click it to open it for editing, click Edit Details, and then click the Splits tab. Is the mystery text in the Memo field of the split line, even through there is no Note in the main transaction? 

Kay Kibby

The problem is the memo lines are not connected to any transaction, so I can't click on them. I can not repeat this outcome on a different transaction report using the same data - Attached is a printout.

jacobs

Thanks for attaching the visual. I continue to believe these memos are attached to transactions; there's just space or returns making them spend onto multiple lines. 

So I want you to please check the 5/16/21 transaction. I believe the text you're seeing is several paragraphs or lines of information in either the main Memo field or the Splits Note field. 

I just tried to create a test of this. I created some simple text similar to yours in TextEdit:

I then did Select All, Copy and pasted this into the Memo field of a transaction. And here's a report with that one transaction similar to yours:


And there it is!

So I remain convinced a block of text was accidentally pasted into the Memo or Notes field of one of your transactions, probably your 5/16/21 transaction shown in your image. Open that transaction, and click in the Memo/Notes field. Do you see this, with the word Note in gray:


or do you see this, with just white in the Memo/Notes field



The first one is what you'd see in the Memo/Notes field is empty. The second is what you'd see in the Memo/Notes field with the multiple lines of text pasted in. If you see the latter, click in the field and press Command-A, followed by Delete to select all the text and remove it.

If the main Memo/Notes field is already blank, then the pasted in text is in the Splits Notes field: click Edit Details and then the Splits tab. Look at the Notes field on the right side of the top split line. If you see "Notes" in gray, the field is empty; if it is all white, there is text in there which is out of view. If it's white, click in the field and press Command-A, followed by Delete to select all the text and remove it.

Once you remove the text hidden in one of those Notes fields, you can run your report again. Onscreen it will look the same, but when you print it, the extra lines will be gone. 

Kay Kibby

Yes, that worked! The Memo column had the word "subscription" in it so I deleted that, then when that was gone I did Select all and deleted again. Thank you for all your detailed instructions. I will print them out and save them in case it ever happens again.