Disappearing categories (Q Mac)

Fairnough

I have been using Quicken for four years. Today, after I updated my accounts online, all categories assigned for the entire four years have disappeared from my credit card account. Checking account is fine. Anybody know how to fix this, short of re-categorizing 4 years worth of data???

Fairnough

Update to my post: the categories appear to still be assigned to the transactions, since Reports and Budgets work as expected. But the register just shows "uncategorized" for every transaction.

Quicken Jared

Fairnough said:

I have been using Quicken for four years. Today, after I updated my accounts online, all categories assigned for the entire four years have disappeared from my credit card account. Checking account is fine. Anybody know how to fix this, short of re-categorizing 4 years worth of data???

Hello @Fairnough, 

I am sorry about this problem with missing categories. Thank you for asking about this here on the Quicken Community.

What financial institution is this credit card associated with? Also, how often do you save backups? We recommend saving backups frequently by navigating to File > Save a Backup File... in the upper menu at the top of the screen while Quicken is open. Provided that this has been done frequently, you should be able to restore from a recent backup by navigating to the same menu and then selecting File > Restore from Backup... Let us know if the issue persists in the restored file.

I look forward to hearing your response.

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

Fairnough

Thanks for the response. The card is Citibank (AT&T Mastercard). I run Quicken once or twice a month, so it saves a backup every time I quit. I tried "Restore from Backup" and had the same result. The information is in the file...somewhere, since if I run a report on the account, all the categories are working. But every transaction in the register say "uncategorized". I could try an older backup, but I am leery of going back too far and not being able to get all the transactions back since the backup.

Quicken Jared

Fairnough said:

Thanks for the response. The card is Citibank (AT&T Mastercard). I run Quicken once or twice a month, so it saves a backup every time I quit. I tried "Restore from Backup" and had the same result. The information is in the file...somewhere, since if I run a report on the account, all the categories are working. But every transaction in the register say "uncategorized". I could try an older backup, but I am leery of going back too far and not being able to get all the transactions back since the backup.

Hello @Fairnough, 

I am sorry that this issue is continuing. Thanks for following up with me about this.

We could perform a kind of test in order to isolate the issue further, if you would like. First, save a backup by navigating to File > Save a Backup File... in the upper menu at the top of the screen while Quicken is open, then create a new 'test' data file by following the steps listed below:

1. Navigate to File
2. Select New
3. Select Start from scratch, click Next
4. Choose appropriate default categories based on geographic location, click Next
5. Choose Don't use Quicken Mobile & Web, click Next 

You may then add one of your affected Citibank accounts in the newly created data file by choosing your financial institution and entering your credentials as prompted. I am curious whether or not the categories appear as they normally would within the account register in this data file. 

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

Fairnough

Thanks, I will try this later on, I am at a work and don't have access to the file. I will get back to you tomorrow.

Fairnough

Hello Jared, I set up the test file as you suggested. There was a problem on Citibank/AT&T's end with having to relink the account, which I did successfully. All transactions downloaded with the correct categories. Next I opened the problem file, and updated all online accounts. Still no categories; on top of this, none of the payments to the account show up in the register (although they do show up in the checking register). The ending balance shown at the top of the screen is thus way too high, although the correct balance shows in the sidebar. ??
Thanks for the help.

jacobs

Fairnough said:

none of the payments to the account show up in the register (although they do show up in the checking register).

It sounds like the payment is marked as a generic "Transfer" category; is that correct? The Transfer category just means that money went to or came from somewhere that Quicken doesn't know about. What you need is either an offsetting Transfer transaction in the credit card account, or ideally, making the exiting transfer transaction a linked transfer, which shows up in both accounts. You can do this by making the Transfer column visible and selecting the Citi/AT&T account. Or you can do it in the Category field, by changing "Transfer" to "Transfer:[Citi/AT&T]" (using the name you have for that account within the square brackets). As soon as you edit this transaction in the checking account, you'll see it now shows up as a reduction in the credit card account.

Fairnough

Hello Jared, I don't know what happened, but the file suddenly fixed itself. The transfers were set up correctly, but I had to reset them and now they are appearing in the CC. All categories are showing up again. No idea why. (I immediately saved a backup!)
Jasmine, I am using the Mac version and there is sadly no "validate" command. But the problem seems to have solved itself.
Thanks for the help.
Dave

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Fairnough, 

We are happy to hear that this issue seems to have resolved itself. 

Please do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns!