Quicken Mac Is Prompting Me To Create Sub-Categories That Already Exist And Won't Use Them

Question

For years, I have had the category of "Income" and a sub-category of "Self" and one of "Spouse".

Suddenly, when I try to use the sub-category of "Income:Self", I'm prompted to create the subcategory like it doesn't already exist. If I try to recreate it, that doesn't work. If I try to paste in the full "Income:Self" designation and save the record, I don't get an error message, but the change does not take effect.

I've attached 3 screenshots:

Step 1 - Existing Category Definitions
 Here, you can see that the subcategory "Income:Self" not only exists, but is part of the "Used Categories" as shown at the top. So clearly, it exists, and there are already transactions using that category.

Step 2 - Create Transaction
 Now, I try to create a transaction, when I type in "Income:" to get all of the sub-categories, the subcategory of "Self" does not appear. Crazy.

Step 3 - Type In Full Name
 So, if I type in "Income:Self", Quicken prompts me to re-create the category. Even if I click "Create new Category", the transaction just saves with the category of "Uncategorized"

This is completely frustrating.

atxabp · Answer

RickO - Good questions and suggestions. I am able to crate a transaction report, and I see the existing transactions. Your suggestion led me down some interesting troubleshooting:

1. I renamed "Self" to "ABCXYZ". In doing so, it shows up in the transaction report as "ABCXYZ" but is not able to be used.
 2. I created a new sub-category, called "Self2". That DOES appear to be usable when creating a transaction.
 3. I was then able to go back to an individual transaction, and change it from "Income:ABCXYZ" to "Income:Self2".
 4. So, then I renamed "Self2" to "Self", and it appears just fine. So, this tells me it's more of an issue with that old category than the text of the category itself.
 5. I then went and MERGED ABCYXZ into "Self", and voilia ... everything is now categorized properly as "Income:Self", and I'm able to use that sub-category in new transations.

So, it's almost like the workaround solution was to:

1. Rename the old sub-category to a new value (e.g. "Income:Self-OLD")
 2. Create a new sub-category of the original text (e.g. "Income:Self")
 3. Merge the two categories, and use "Income:Self" as the target.

unknown · Answer

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atxabp · Answer

I tried a recent backup, and the problem still exists. I don't know how long ago this first started, but I've noticed it for at least the last 2 months, but just ignored it, because it was only affected a couple of categories I don't use often. Now that it's affecting a category I use for my paycheck 2x per month, it's become really frustrating.