Transaction categories no longer autofill when I download? HELP! (Q Mac)

Makers

It seems that lately when I download transactions Quicken no longer autofills the categories associated with payees the way it did in the past. Every transaction comes up "uncategorized" How do I turn the autofill feature back on if Quicken somehow turned it off?

RickO

There's no on/off setting for category fill, but check the setting in Quicken > Settings > Connected Services to improve the quality of downloaded transaction categories. Other than that, if you manually assign categories to transactions for a while, Quicken should start learning from that.

Makers

Thanks, that check box is checked (and has been.) I've been using Quicken since the 90s and it has been "learning" all along. Only for the past few weeks does it seem to have "forgotten" all my past payee/category associations. It'll be like starting all over now if it has to relearn from scratch. There has to be some explanation for this!

Quicken David

@Makers if you are still seeing this problem, could you please report it using Help > Report a Problem...?

Also, you can create a QuickFill rule when editing a transaction to automatically apply the category (and, optionally, Tags and Memo/Notes).

Makers

Thanks for your interest. I have reported the problem as you advise above. Meantime, note that I have been using the checkbox as you mentioned above though it doesn't seem to matter. The category doesn't autofill on subsequent downloads of transactions to the same payee.

If you're interested, here's the fuller description I just left via Help>Report ….

I am running Quicken Version 7.7.0 (Build 707.53335.100) on an iMac running Ventura 13.6.6. For the last few weeks, categories no longer autofill when I download transactions. I have been using Quicken for 30+ years so have a long history of payee and category associations that have autofilled (e.g. “Groceries” for a charge to Safeway.) Having to reenter categories for every downloaded transaction is incredibly time consuming and makes Quicken far less useful to me. Note that using the “Save QuickFill rule …” checkbox when I edit the transaction to enter the category seems of no use either since the category still doesn’t autofill the next time I download a transaction from that payee. Help!!!

Quicken David

Thanks, @Makers. Is it possible the downloaded payee names have changed, and no longer match the payees in your QuickFill Rules? If so, I would suggest creating Payee Renaming rules, which you can do manually, in the Payees & Rules window, or by checking the box (see screenshot) when renaming the payee for a downloaded transaction.

Makers

Yes, this happens occasionally, but unfortunately does not explain why now EVERY transaction downloads without a matched category. And, as I mentioned, I've been checking the "Save Quickfill…" checkbox and each subsequent download from the same payee downloads as uncategorized.

Makers

Still looking for some sort of solution to this problem! To hand enter everything defeats the purpose of using a computer to track expenses!

Quicken David

@Makers I'm not aware of other Quicken customers experiencing this issue, which makes it pretty tricky to track down. Submitting another feedback report, this time including a Sanitized File, may give us some clues.

Makers

Sanitized file?

jacobs

@Makers When you go to Help > Report a Problem, the first checkbox on the right is for "Sanitized data file". It is not checked by default; you must check it. What this does is create a copy of your data file, replacing all your data with anonymous names: Account1, Account2, Account3; Payee1, Payee2, Payee3; Category1, Category2; Tag1, Tag2, etc. The result is a file which has the identical structure to your data file, with none of the identifying information. So it's safe to send to Quicken the the engineers to poke into without fear that you are sharing any identifiable data.