Deleting old, unused payees (Q Mac)

Question

When trying to delete old unused payees from my list, I'm told that I can't delete them because they are used in transactions and are already labeled "hidden". Is there a way around this?

lhossus · Answer

One more suggestion:

Rename the Payee by placing a "zz " before the original name.

This simply has the effect of grouping all old unwanted payees at the bottom of the list, thus getting them out of the way.

UKR · Answer

OTOH, if these unused payees are spelling variations of the same payee, e.g. McD, Mac Donald, McDonalds, etc. or Lowes #123, Lowes #234, etc. you can do some cleanup by merging the variations into one standard name.Quickfill and/or Renaming Rules would help avoid variations in the future.

jacobs · Answer

If there's a Payee you no longer want, it can't be deleted because then you'd have transactions with no Payee. So if you really want to delete a Payee, you can do one forgo things:* Delete the old transactions which use this Payee, and then Quicken will automatically delete the Payee
* Merge the Payee you don't want into some other Payee. You could even create a Payee called "Deleted Payees" to merge several Payees into.

That said, I don't see any value in doing this; it's doing extra work and I can't see what benefit it achieves for you.