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Categories Woes - "Personal Expense" categories held hostage by "Investment" group

BoaHancock79

Hi, Experts!

Quicken for Windows, R53.32

I've looked at this from every angle I could imagine, tried everything I could think of, HELP!

When I look into Tools → Category List, there are a number of Category items which appear only in the "Investment" group, and cannot be edited:

Because they are SOMEHOW within this "Investment" group, they cannot be Edited, Deleted, Moved, Merged, or ANYTHING:

Things I already tried:

Validate / Super Validate
Copy into a new file
Assign categories to custom newly-created groups (including a group called "Investment".)
Export categories (both QIF and QXF formats) from a blank quicken QDF file and import them into my file
Manage categories adding all of them again
Change tax line on hostage categories.

Nothing works — and in fact, some got things worst. Changing the tax-line of a "Hostage Category" to a business-related tax-line (Schedule-C) moves it to the Business Expenses group BUT it cannot be moved back or edited or changed now!!!!! :-(

It is as if it had memory that it is a protected well-known internal Category (as all the ones that start with "_" which I understand should not be edited or changed… but these regular vanilla categories mistakenly think they are the _Special ones!!! :-(

Screenshot 2024-01-02 at 11.36.57 PM.png

So Travel should not be there, and I cannot move it…

Compare the above picture to how it should work in the one below:

Anyway, I have dozens of Caterogies STUCK in these Investment group, cannot move them, rename them, etc…

When did this start? Was like this for a while, I imagine in decades of upgrades, but now I need those categories STUCK…

HELP! Happy to provide any log or try any creative solutions!!!

Thanks!

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Comments

splasher

You data file has an issue evidently and might be resolved by doing a file validation (File menu).

Here is what my category list looks like when the Investment group is selected.

It has none of the items yours is showing, but for some reason, yours is showing the text for some different categories but thinks they are the ones that are shown in my list which correctly can not be changed (start with the _ ).

mshiggins

When did the issue start? Have you tried restoring a backup from before the issue began?

BoaHancock79

Thank you for the response, @splasher . Yes, my "Investment" group categories has all of those, the ones starting with "_" are there and fine.

However, unfortunately, it has a bunch of others which should be in "Personal Expenses", but because they made it to investment, they cannot be changed.

And yes, as I wrote, I tried Validate, Super Validate, Copy to a new file, Import categories… the issue, frankly, is that the logic on the investment group should block changing the "_*" of course, but should allow changing others!

Hi, @mshiggins - I am not sure when it started, but long ago looks like! No, I cannot restore from a backup before it begun, because it begun long ago… not even makes sense to track when, since my file with Quicken started in the year 2000.

So, thus far, nothing works. Other thoughts? Pleasy please? Thanks!

Chris_QPW

I don't think there is anything you can do other than try to move your data to another data file or live with it.

Your file is corrupted in a way that can't be fixed.

Just looking at the dialog you get for editing one of these tells me that something very strange is going on.

Here is the edit of a built-in one, (Ctrl+Shift+right click allows for the edit).

Even this one allows for changing the group. Your dialog is missing that.

And when you get into regular categories it is:

So, Quicken thinks this is some kind of very unusual category. And it is now.

Given that you are using Home and Business and have business accounts and such using a QIF file export/import is even more error prone than usual, but here is all I know about that process:

https://www.quicknperlwiz.com/changetransfers.html

BoaHancock79

Thank you, @Chris_QPW for taking a look and the response!

The screencap you included that "Allows changing the group", is only because you have some Customer groups, whereas I do not. If you delete the custom groups, that combo box goes away.

To me, what most likely happened is that Quicken allowed for some grouping, or did not have Investment group, and at some point it was added, taking some categories hostage since new versions are misgrouped them.

In either case, though, I would not say it's a corrupted file, but a Software bug.

Quicken is protecting some categories from being changed, from the documentation those should only be "_foobar", and has some internal flag treating mine regular ones as to-be-protected…

The sad part is that after 50 minutes on the phone with Quicken support, someone tells me it is all working as expected - LOL! :-(

Chris_QPW

Yes, I tend to agree with your analysis, but let me say something about "corrupted file". People tend to think when something like that is said it was done by say a disk failure or something like that, but in my estimation almost every "corrupted data file" can be traced back to a software bug. And so, all I mean by that is your data file is now in a state that given what tools that are available you can't correct that state.

I can't imagine what bug let you or did it on its own that put those categories in investment category group. I'm not using Home and Business, but I can't imagine it is different for this in comparison to Premier, and there isn't any way I can move those categories into the Investment category group, it just isn't an option.

BoaHancock79

Thanks for the clarification, @Chris_QPW , and violent agreement.

For completeness, to me, a corrupted file is one on which data integrity is compromised. Unfortunately, the Quicken data file contains what the software (incorrectly) intended, or (incorrectly) parses now.

Either case, I'd love to be able to change whichever bitflags or attributes are misinterpreted by today's version of quicken