Sidebar too narrow (Q Mac)
So I have a lot of accounts, over 60 now. I maily use Quicken to track my accounts and balances. To make the names unique, and to show some information, I have names like this:
Navy FCU 15 Month Addon CD 2024-10-19 1234
which gets truncated or shortened in 2 places places that I use most often (i.e. sidebar and transaction windows).
Why do your programmers insist on putting maximum width numbers on the sidebars? Especially on native programs like Quicken Classic Mac where you can run it on a 34" monitor with 10 gazillion pixels. I shouldn't have to see anything truncated, neither in the sidebar or the title of the transaction window.
This issue is also why I will never use Simplifi. Its sidebar makes it unusable for me. At least Quicken Classic Mac is usable. The web version of Quicken Classic is bad too with menu buttons on the left that cover up the account list. You have pretty graphs that I don't use and dashboards that i rarely use, but the one thing I do use, an account list with my balances seems like an afterthought.
I would love to be able to completely manage and control the sidebar. Rearrange accounts and categories. Move my Fidelity Cash Management account into the Cash section, etc.
Step one is to just let me make the sidebar wider. Probably one line of code or a configuration parameter.
Answers
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@BH2 I just tried it, and your "Navy FCU 15 Month Addon CD 2024-10-19 1234" name is fully visible in the sidebar — as long as you keep the balance at or under $999.99. 😂
I do understand your request, but I think there are a variety of options for making the sidebar workable. For instanc,e you can turn off the display of cents, and then that name would fit with a balance up to 99,999. Or you can simply come up with a slightly shorter nomenclature system. "15 Mo" instead of "15 Month", "add" instead of "Addon", "24-10-19" instead of "2024-10-19" — any of those would make the name fit unless the CD is for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In any case, posts here are not reviewed by the development team or Quicken executives. Except: you can create a post in the Product Ideas for Quicken Mac section of the forum, with specific suggestions for program enhancements. (There are separate sections for Quicken on the Web, Quicken Mobile, and Quicken Windows.) It's best to try to keep each Idea request focused on one issue, rather than a collection of issues. Posts there can be voted on and commented on by other Quicken users, and when the vote total for an Idea reaches a critical mass, the Idea is sent on to the development team for consideration. It's not a quick process, but it does work to get features implemented over the long haul.
I would love to be able to completely manage and control the sidebar. Rearrange accounts and categories. Move my Fidelity Cash Management account into the Cash section, etc.
Many people have asked for the ability to re-order/re-group things in the sidebar. In the past the developers have said they've looked into it and aren't going to implement it dues to unspecified complexities in doing so. There's currently another Idea post seeking user-control over the sidebar, which hasn't yet been rejected — nor accepted — by the developers. You should click on this link to add your vote and a comment about why you want this functionality added. (To vote for an Idea, find the yellow box under the first post in the thread, and click on the dark gray triangle under the vote counter; it turns light gray once you've voted for an Idea.)
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
It's not clear to me in the above discussion that you're aware that you can control the sidebar width to a degree. If you hover of the edge of the sidebar then click/drag when the double arrow cursor appears, you can widen the sidebar to some extent.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
I know how to control my data and the sidebar settings, just not override the hardcoded width limitation, at least in the MacOS code. I have added an 'idea' post. When I maximize the application on my new 34" 5k2k monitor, the sidebar is a maximum of 3.5 inches wide and the register is 27.5 inches wide.
I can of course keep the names smaller, remove the cents, or donate money to keep my balances lower :-). If I worked for Quicken, I'd just change that one line of code.
One the Quicken website, with a tiny bit of css knowledge and using a nice to make a bookmarklet that will make it wider. Here is the css I used in the website to make the bookmarklet. I can't post links or javascript…
.css-14suy9p-t-drawerPaper { width: 480px; }
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And I upvoted the re-ordering suggestion. It would be nice to be able to edit my posts. My last post should say that I used a nice web page I found on the internet to make the bookmarklet that sets the right css value to make the sidebar wider. I saved it in my browser bookmarks, and just click on it once I log into quicken classic. I could probably do something similar to fix the Simplifi sidebar too :-)
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And that bookmarklet doesn't really work very well as it is probably on the wrong div. The scroll bar makes the text jump around. But at lease I can read my account names….
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If I worked for Quicken, I'd just change that one line of code.
I’d bet that it’s not quite as simple at that. They have to make sure that when a user widens the sidebar, it doesn’t obscure or cause overlap of any of the elements in the main window, like objects in the bottom toolbar. I’m not saying it’s rocket science, just that it’s not quite as simple as you said. 😉
I will say that I’ve seen requests to be able to make the main window smaller than it currently allows, but yours is the first I recall seeing seeking a wider sidebar.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
As a retired programmer (not a UI programmer), I would hope that if it was my code, I could remove the size limitation in less time than it took me to complain about it this afternoon 😁. You all have a nice day and thanks for responding.
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Fixing the code could indeed be very quick. In my experience (over 3 decades of SW development) actually changing the code for little changes like that is usually trivial. Testing the change for unintended side effects is the time consuming part.
And IMO it's highly unlikely that they would completely remove the size restriction; they're not going to let the sidebar take up the entire window. At best they'd move the limit farther out but there would still be a limit.
Quicken Mac subscription. Quicken user since 1990.
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