Can I change categories from year to year w/o losing historic data?

Richard Laird

I have too many categories and would like to start anew next year with a more workable number of categories. I do not want to lose the historic data.

Jon

If you rename or delete categories those changes will be applied to your entire file including past transactions. There's no way to have a bunch of old categories that no longer show up in your category list; you'd have to start a new file.

RickO

As Jon says, if you just start using a smaller list of categories, the old categories will still show up in the Categories list/window. Unfortunately, there's no way to hide categories that you are no longer using; they will still show up in the category popup list when you are entering a transaction. One workaround people use for this situation is to rename the no-longer-used calories to start with a "z" or any greek letter (hold option on the keyboard). These will then sort to the end of the category list and be out of the way as you are entering transactions, but still be there for historical purpose.

Another thing to consider though... if you are trying to reduce the number of categories, you may want to consider merging some of your existing categories if your current category list is just too fine-grained. For example, say you currently have a category "Gas" for natural gas bills and another one "Electric" for the electricity supplier. You may want to combine these into a single category "Utilities". This can easily be done. Here's the procedure: 

1. In the Categories window, select one of the categories.
2. Hold down the command (Apple) key on the keyboard and click the 2nd category.
3. Click the Merge Categories button at the bottom of the window.
4. You will be given the option of which category name to retain.
5. Once the categories have been combined, double click the remaining category and rename it (e.g., Electric ==> Utilities).

After merging two categories, all transactions from either pre-merge category will now show the newly merged category. 

Note that the two categories must be at the top level of the hierarchy, or subcategories of the same higher level category. If they are not, you can correct this by dragging and dropping a subcategory from it's primary category out between two top level categories. Or you can drag a subcategory from one top level category to a different top level category.

If you make a mistake, menu Edit > Undo will let you fix it as long as you haven't closed the file. But before you start, I'd make sure you have a backup in case things get screwed up.

Richard Laird

If I start a new file, can I start from scratch, creating/naming categories with the same name as my current file? If so, I assume that the historic data will stay in my current file and I would be starting at zero with the new file.

Jon

Yes. Category names are unique to each file, so a new file is going to start with the default categories Quicken creates and you can make changes from there. Those changes won't affect your existing file.