Restore ability to drag and drop in Categories window (Q Mac)

rbnrbrts

I just realized today, my coveted Drag and Drop function in the Categories window is now GONE! The function was a significant selling point in my purchase of Quicken for Mac years ago. Today, I was told this function has been removed in the latest version update 7.4.2. Why????

Rearranging categories on-the-fly with drag-and-drop is one of the most used and useful functions with Quicken. I am constantly tweaking categories as financial adjustments come up….which is all-the-time. The ease of use of this function cannot be overstated.

Please reconsider the latest Quicken move of eliminating this function. Not a good move. As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!

Bring this Drag-and-Drop function in the Categories window back to life!!!!!

jacobs

You're correct that drag-and-drop in the Categories window was removed in the 7.4 release. However, what was added was a big win for many user: the ability to merge sub-categories of different categories without tediously needing to move them to the same level of hierarchy before they could be merged.

Most users do significant category clean-up/alteration only infrequently, an periodically change a category or two; I'm a little surprised you say you frequently change categories.

The developers indicated they may be able to bring back drag-and-drop category editing in the future, but if you find this an important feature, I'd suggest you create a new Idea post (feature request) in the Product Idea part of the forum: click here. If the Idea gets enough votes, the moderators can push it on to the developers.

73VJ6szA3aB5LGD

I agree wholeheartedly with rbnrbrts above. I have been a Quicken for Mac for about 2.5 years and it has greatly eased my household budget keeping.

But as of today Jan 3, 2024, I cannot Drag And Drop entries (until recently this was easily employed). This facility has been of great use as bank entries downloaded to Quicken end up being posted in an incoherent & unorganized manner and to be able to Drag And Drop entries to have matched entries be adjacent to each other makes comprehension of transactions in the account vastly improved.

As to jacobs response above: "Most users do significant category clean-up/alteration only infrequently", I, in contrast, find this requirement to be a daily one and — particularly now — it becomes so bothersome if there are many transactions to have taken place on one day, or, if I haven't attended to this task for some days, it makes the reconciliation of transactions particularly tedious and time-consuming.

And is jacobs saying (or implying) that Drag and Drop & "the ability to merge sub-categories of different categories" CANNOT be co-existent?

As jacobs remarks, "developers indicated they may be able to bring back drag-and-drop category editing in the future", please put this feature on a priority footing.

Please make every effort to re-incorporate Drag And Drop again — WHY remove a facility which is so user friendly, and which made Quicken a product so pleasurable to use?

Jon

@73VJ6szA3aB5LGD The drag & drop under discussion here is only in the Categories window. If you're having a problem with moving transactions in a register or dragging & dropping one transaction onto another to match them, that's something new. I personally have no problem rearranging transactions in 7.4.2; I haven't had to manually match any transactions recently, so haven't had the opportunity to find out if there's a problem with that.

jacobs

@73VJ6szA3aB5LGD Yes, as @Jon says, my comments which you quoted were only about the ability to re-arrange categories and sub-categories in the Categories window via drag-and drop rather than editing the category.

Drag and drop in other places remains as functional as it has been in the past. You can still drag and drop transactions to move them into another account. You can still drag and drop a downloaded transaction and a manual transaction to merge them. Nothing has changed outside the Categories window.

You wrote:

But as of today Jan 3, 2024, I cannot Drag And Drop entries (until recently this was easily employed). This facility has been of great use as bank entries downloaded to Quicken end up being posted in an incoherent & unorganized manner and to be able to Drag And Drop entries to have matched entries be adjacent to each other makes comprehension of transactions in the account vastly improved.

I just tried drag and drop with a downloaded transaction over a manual transaction and it worked as expected. I did drag-and-drop to change the order of transactions on a single day, and that worked as expected. I selected a few transactions and moved them from one account to another with drag and drop, and that worked as expected. So it you're having a drag-and-drop problem, I'd suggest you start a new thread, since it's not related to what was originally discussed here, and provide details about what you're trying to do that isn't working.

73VJ6szA3aB5LGD

ref: Jacobs @ 1:03pm

Thank you for a prompt response.

My misunderstanding — yes, I see now that the conversation was about "categories". I apologise. (My frustration blinded my perception!)

My concern is about the Payee/Security entry, or in fact any entry in a row - it doesn't matter - that I try to move

When ever I click on, say, a Payee/Security item in an attempt to Drag and Drop the item, (and the entire line is highlighted; the Date, the Payee, Category, Amount, and Account), (and even if it's NOT highlighted), and attempt to move the line item, a "not allowed" icon appears (a circle with a dash through it). Please review a screenshot of this condition below.

I note what you say "I just tried drag and drop with a downloaded transaction over a manual
transaction and it worked as expected. I did drag-and-drop to change the
order of transactions on a single day, and that worked as expected." —- but it isn't working with me. As I said earlier, I have been able to perform this action easily, but now with the New Year it seems to be not possible.

I thought the only thing that is different from past Drag and Drop actions is that this is a new "Year", new entries starting 2024-01-01. But then I attempted to do the action in last year's entries and the same thing is happening there, now.

I really appreciate your attention to this matter

Sincerely, David.

IMG_4361.JPG

Jon

I can't tell from your screen shot how the register is sorted, but you can't move a transaction to a location that is inconsistent with the register sorting. For example, if it's sorted by date then you can only move a transaction among other transactions with the same date - if you drag it into transactions with a different date it won't allow you to move it there. In your case the register is sorted by some other field outside the picture so it's difficult to say if that's what is happening.

Also, if you have a downloaded transaction I don't think it will let you match it to another downloaded transaction because it knows they are not the same. You can only drag it onto a manually entered transaction.

73VJ6szA3aB5LGD

Jon,

Thank you for your response.

Please refer to my screenshots attached; Transactions page, and Quicken Preferences.

Transactions: You will notice that out of the 8 transactions shown, the middle 6 are in pairs of same $value (ignoring + & -). These 6 entries were not like that on the initial download of Dec 2, 2023, they were scattered among 13 items total downloaded that day. And on that day I manually Dragged and Dropped those 6 items into the positions you see now, for ease of tracing the entries (which is the whole point of the exercise).

transactions.png

So, I haven't done anything different from last year (and as I said before, earlier, that now I cannot even D & D any items from 2023 without getting a 'prohibited' icon.

Please also review the Preferences pane for Register if there is something amiss there.

preferences.png

Thanks again for your attention,

David.

P.S. Perhaps what this needs is a telecon with screen sharing to talk through this issue. My number is on file.

Jon

@73VJ6szA3aB5LGD I don't work for Quicken, I'm just another user. If you want to talk to Quicken Support, click the Support link at the top of the page.

I can't think of any other reason why D&D wouldn't work. I had never tried doing that in the All Transactions register before, but when I did just now it seems to work the same as any other register.

73VJ6szA3aB5LGD

Jon,

Thank you for your efforts. I had no idea you are a user. Thought I was dealing with Quicken itself.

Peace.

jacobs

@73VJ6szA3aB5LGD The register you have pictured is All Transactions. That's why there are duplicate transactions with opposite signed amounts: one is a transfer out of one account and the other is the transfer into the other. You always get the "prohibited" icon while dragging any transaction in its own register; it only disappears if you drag a transaction (a) over one it can be matched with, (b) into a different account in the left sidebar, or © if you're changing the order of transactions on the same date.

I also note that, in your first screen shot, the register is sorted by the Attachments column. So you can't drag transactions on the same date into a different order because you're not sorted by date. If you click the Date column to sort by date, you'll be able to drag transactions into a different order within that date. Note that it always shows the "prohibited" icon as you drag, until your cursor passes over the line between the two transactions when it changes to a horizontal blue line to indicate it will move there if you release your mouse.

So what exactly were you trying to accomplish here? Were you trying to change the order of the transactions on December 2? Then change your Sort field to Date, and you'll be able to do it.

By the way, I'm also a fellow user. 😀 Everyone in this forum is a fellow user, except for the handful of Quicken moderators who keep the site organized and answer some questions; you can tell if you're conversing with a Quicken employee because their username will begin with Quicken (e.g. "Quicken Bob"). If you want to work with Quicken Support, you can reach them via phone or text chat by clicking the Support link at the top of the page; the phone representatives have the capability to share your screen, with your permission, which is often helpful on an issue like this where having them see what you're seeing is important.

Jon

@jacobs may be onto something here. If I sort the All Transactions register on some non-Date column I can no longer rearrange transactions at all, even ones on the same date. That only works when the register is sorted by Date.

anonnn

I agree. D&D is needed.

I used to be able to easily move categories. Now I can't.

Please bring this back.

Quicken Anja

Hello All,

I went ahead and changed this post to an Idea so all users who have the same or a similar request can vote on this by clicking the up arrow (see below).

Ideas are also reviewed by our Development and Product teams in order to improve Quicken and implement new features requested by customers.

Please, be sure to add your own vote as well.

rbnrbrts

Thank you Anja for placing this "Former Great Idea" into the '(new great) Ideas' category as this is one Idea definitely worth recycling!

I'd be curious to know, why was the D&D in Categories removed in the first place?? I can't imagine any user/customer complaining about such a useful function and thereby requesting its removal.

Can you enlighten customers on the decision process within Quicken to yank the D&D in Categories??

It would truly be great to have the D&D function in Categories reinstated. The current work around is inefficient and frankly a 'work-around'.

Thank you

jacobs

@rbnrbrts @anonnn Now that this thread has been opened for voting, please be sure to go to the top of the page and click the little dark gray arrow in the yellow box to vote for the Idea. While comments explaining why a feature is needed, or how you think it should be implemented, are always useful, the Idea needs to gather enough votes for it to be submitted to the developers.

@rbnrbrts said: I'd be curious to know, why was the D&D in Categories removed in the first place?? I can't imagine any user/customer complaining about such a useful function and thereby requesting its removal. Can you enlighten customers on the decision process within Quicken to yank the D&D in Categories?

The developers (almost) never provide any commentary about why a particular feature was implemented in the way that it was, so I wouldn't expect a reply to your question.

But we can figure it out at least partly. With version 7.4, the developers introduced a first iteration of a Business & Personal level of the program with features for users who run a small business. Key to doing that was separating business categories from personal categories. And in the past, if you wanted to merge a category with a subcategory, or visa versa, it required first moving the two to the same level (either both main categories or both subcategories of the same category). Even just moving a subcategory from one category to another via dragging could be difficult and error-prone if the two categories were far apart in the list. So to make this process easier — for all users, but especially for people rearranging their categories into business and personal — they made it possible to edit a category/subcategory and select where to "drop" it as a subcategory from a dropdown menu rather than dragging it a long distance. That dropdown menu separates personal categories and business categories, making it less likely for a user to make a business category a subcategory of a personal category or visa versa. So I think I understand why they made that change, and I think being able to merge subcategories with different parent categories in one step is a big improvement.

That said, what we don't know is why they didn't implement those changes but retain the ability to drag-and-drop in the categories window as well. It may have been a technical complexity, or it may have been an effort to help new Business users keep their business and personal categories straight. If it's the latter, I understand but I think it was a mistake to remove drag-and-drop from the categories window. If it's the former, hopefully with additional development time, they will be able to re-implement drag-and-drop.

In any case, anyone who would like to see the developers restore the ability to arrange categories and subcategories in the Categories window via drag-and-drop, it's important to add your vote above.

Jon

Since this thread has been turned into a suggestion that people can vote on, I took the liberty of changing the thread title to make it more obvious what's being voted on.

rwsmith425

So glad I found this. I reported it as a "bug" some time ago and had no idea it was an explicit degradation in the design. FYI, all of your phone tech support people I spoke to were unaware of the change and also believed it to be a bug.

rbnrbrts

Ditto on the "phone tech support people" being unaware and needing to go up-the-chain to find out of the deliberate feature removal.

jacobs

@rbnrbrts @rwsmith425 @Jon @anonnn @73VJ6szA3aB5LGD

Anyone who has posted in this thread to register your desire to see the prior drag-and-drop restored to the Categories window, you must add your vote in the yellow box at the top of this page. (At the time of this post, there 6 people who have posted comments in this thread, but it has only 4 votes.)