How do I stop Quicken from filling in categories? Register Preferences, Data Entry

MKeen

Register Preferences, Data Entry and QuickFill: I have unchecked the "Complete fields using previous entries" box, but Quicken still fills in what it wants. It screws me up because it usually chooses the wrong category, e.g., Comcast is filled as television, but it is my internet. I want to just manually choose the categories. I'm on Windows, Version R51.12. It's been doing it for about a year or so. I don't know what triggered it.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @MKeen,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about this issue.  I'm sorry to hear you're running into this problem. Are you choosing the Payee from the Memorized Payee List? If so, then you may want to check that list to see if there are memorized versions of that payee that have the wrong category. If that isn't what is happening, could you please provide more detail on how the incorrect category is being filled in?

Thank you.

The Keeper

Creating a new category or subcategory

1. From the Quicken Tools menu, choose Category List.
2. Choose New Category, which is located at the upper right of the Category List window.
3. Type in a Category Name and Description.

If you want to edit a category list

1. From the Quicken tools menu, choose Category list
2. Scroll down and find the category you wish to edit
3. If the Category is Comcast and it shows the sub-category as Television, right-click on "television" and select delete.

MKeen

Thank you for your responses, Quicken Kristina and The Keeper. It's not that I want to change the categories that autofill. It's that I don't want them to autofill in the first place. I have unchecked the "Complete fields using previous entries" box, but Quicken still fills it in. Yes, it would be easy enough to change the Comcast category, but there are a number of payees that could be different categories - so I don't want them autofilled at all. I want to do it manually. I am not choosing Payees. These are credit cards or bank accounts downloading Payees that are not on my Memorized Payee List. Any suggestions as to how to turn off the autofill?

Chris_QPW

"Complete fields using previous entries" is for manual entry, not downloading transactions.

Make sure this Preference is off:

Downloaded transactions → Automatically Categorize transactions

Note that neither of these settings affect the filling in the categories when the payee matches to an entry in the Memorized Payee list while downloading.

My personal preference is to have this setting off, and when a new payee comes in I fill in the category and select Ctrl+M to memory it so that it will use that category again. Or if there is some reason, I don't want it to automatically be categorized I just enter it without memorizing it. Automatic categorizing is nice when you are first starting out, but later I rather it come up empty than have the wrong "automatic" category. It is easy to detect uncategorized transactions.

I might also point out that there is an option in each Memorized Payee entry to not categorize that payee. For instance, I have the payee "Check" set that way.

MKeen

Thank you, Chris_QPW! That is exactly the approach I'm looking for. I have now unchecked "Downloaded transactions → Automatically Categorize transactions". I expect that will work (but I haven't tested it yet).