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

jacobs

We'll see over the coming weeks by trial and error if Quicken doesn't pipe up to clarify this for me/us sooner. It can be difficult to debug someone else's software!

@Makers Not to beat on you too much about this, but the best way to get them to dive into what you're experiencing is to provide the sanitized version of your data file, the diagnostic tool they created for just such situations. While it's sometimes possible to find a fault just by a description, it's often impossible to fix a problem if they can't see it. I understand you don't trust sending them the sanitized version of your data file, but it seems a little unfair to then say they should be able to fix it "if they take the time". It's your prerogative to not send them the file to help diagnose the problem, but I think you need to accept that without help from users experiencing a fringe problem like this, they may not be able to find it, or may not devote the effort if they feel like they're flying blind. Just my 2¢… 😉

Makers

@Jacobs - I probably went too far when I said it's "difficult to debug someone else's software," since what I'm really after at this point is simply some insight into or at least confirmation that something changed. You are certainly right that if I want them to explain exactly what I'm seeing, I'm tying their hands a bit by being unwilling to send my file. Note though that I'm not so much asking them to fix the problem, as I am asking them to confirm a change was made (and recognize its impact.) From there they will decide whether there is something they want to "fix it," and/or allow me to make adjustments without me feeling like I'm doing so in the dark, which is where I am now.

@RickO - You make a good point as well. Thanks!

jacobs

@RickO Yeah, I thought about that; the sanitized file might not help. But in this case, a Quicken developer has participated, and he asked for a sanitized file to be sent, so I didn't want to second-guess that. It might be more useful for someone from Quicken to screen share to see the problem in real time — but if @Makers doesn't want to send a sanitized file over privacy concerns, then I'm guessing it's unlikely he'd be willing to let a Quicken Support person view the live data file. 😉

@Makers Just as an FYI, it's extremely rare for a Quicken engineer to post in a thread on this forum, as happened here. You are asking for Quicken to report back to you on what changes may have been made to their back end servers, which I think is highly unlikely. I can't tell you how unusual it is for a member of the development team to post here (unless they're trying to track down a specific problem), so seeking a dialog about what may have changed at the server level just isn't something I've seen here. You can have dialog with a Quicken Support representative, but not generally with someone on the actual development team.

If they have received additional reports of the same problem you've described from their Customer Support team, then they may be working on tracking the problem and trying to fix it; if it's an isolated problem reported by a user or two but not more, then they likely aren't.

Makers

@Jacobs - I think you're reading my post a little too literally. Clearly it doesn't require anyone with a specific title or job description from Quicken to respond, much less have a dialog with me. What I'm hoping for is that my issue gets discussed internally with/among the people who have actual knowledge of code changes (eg, developers), and that the results of that discussion be relayed here. I'm also not asking for more detail than a confirmation that changes were made that would result in what I'm seeing. By the way, maybe you can help me to understand who exactly SuperUsers are? Are they consumers/users who've developed expertise with the product and volunteer their time to help others with day to day questions about how to accomplish this or that?

Makers

Excellent. Thank you, @RickO. I've been using Quicken and TurboTax for decades and have, over the years learned a lot, mostly through trial and error. After all the frustration that comes along with that, I can hardly imagine monitoring a board trying to solve other people's issues too! 🤣

jacobs

@Makers As @RickO says, you've described SuperUsers accurately. I was a longtime Quicken Mac user who hung on through the lean years in the early 2010's when it seemed Quicken for Mac might fade away, and I got involved early in the beta testing project for the current Quicken Mac in 2014. I continue to be a beta tester, but I enjoy spending time on this forum trying to help — and learning from — fellow Quicken users. We don't get much "inside" information, but by spending a lot of time on the site over the years, we've gotten to observe not only quirks and tricks with the program, but how the company and the Mac development team work.

I'm also not asking for more detail than a confirmation that changes were made that would result in what I'm seeing.

I understand. But what you're seeing doesn't appear to be what almost everyone else is seeing. When I download transactions, they come into Quicken auto-categorized, just as they always have. And because there aren't dozens or hundreds of posts on this site reporting loss of all auto-categorization, I can infer that most other users have not experienced the change you've described. So I'm just saying that, unless there are other reports coming in to the development team from their Customer Support channel describing the same issue, it's unlikely anyone on the development team is digging into what you've reported.

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Continuing to work the problem…

One thing that might help is if you create a new file for testing, and connect just one or two of your accounts to download. If the transactions come in categorized, then it points to something unique in your data file which is blocking auto-categorization.

And that makes me think of another other thing I don't think anyone has suggested yet in this thread. If you're experiencing a unique problem, I wonder if a hidden preference/setting has been set causing autocategorization to be turned completely off. In Settings > Connected Services, we previously talked about the checkbox for "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories, and you said it is checked. Try unchecking it, and possibly changing some other preference setting; quit Quicken, relaunch, and set the preferences back to what they were before (e.g. "automatically improve…" is on.) Then see if transacitons download categorized or not.

Another way to attack the same hypothesis about a stuck/damaged preference is to temporarily move the preferences file so Quicken creates a new one. To do this, quit Quicken, and in the Finder hold down the Option key and select Library from the Go menu. Open Preferences and scroll down to locate "com.Quicken.quicken.plist". Verify that the modification date is today. Drag this file to your Desktop. (Leave the folder open.) Launch Quicken, and you should see in the Preferences folder that a new Quicken plist file has just been created. Now download transactions, and see if there is any change in behavior. (Note that all your other preferences will be reverted to Quicken defaults during this test. If you download and find nothing has changed, you can quit Quicken delete the .plist file in the Library folder, and then drag the old .plist file on your Desktop back into the Library folder, to restore your old defaults.)

Obviously, each of these tests with your existing data file requires that there are new transactions to download, so you may have to wait a few days between tests for there to be new transactions available for download.

Makers

@Jacobs - Regarding your …

First idea above - good idea. The only issue is once downloaded, I don't think I can download them again in my real file, resulting in more work than just missing categories. Worth considering regardless for sure.

Second idea - I have tried this, figuring the issue was a corrupted config file on my end. No joy.

Third idea - Also worth pursuing for the same reason. I make a note to try this.

Last comment - This gets at what makes this issue particularly frustrating to debug. I don't want to change more than one thing at a time, and I need to wait a week or so after each change to accumulate applicable transactions to test with.

Thanks again for your continued interest!

PS. I still think what I'm seeing is the result of a server-side change that I may be slowly recovering from by rebuilding vendor/category associations on my side.

jacobs

First idea above - good idea. The only issue is once downloaded, I don't think I can download them again in my real file, resulting in more work than just missing categories. Worth considering regardless for sure.

Actually not true. 😀 Each Quicken data file is self-contained, but what's been downloaded into one file won't prevent something from downloading into another file. I have files for my testing on two computers, and I regularly download the same information into both of them, sometimes only minutes apart.

What you cannot do is delete transactions in a file and expect them to re-download. Every transaction downloaded has a unique transaction ID value assigned by the financial institution (the FITID number), and Quicken keeps a table of all the ID values it has ever downloaded; when it see one it has previously downloaded, it discards it.

Your financial institution isn't keeping track of what it had previously downloaded to Quicken; each time you download, it dumps whatever recent transactions is has, and leaves it to Quicken to decide what's new and what's a duplicate.

Makers

Ahhhh! So I definitely learned something new today! Thanks! Great to know!

user_reh

I have the same problem. It started sometime in May 2024. Downloaded transactions no longer auto populate the categories. This is has always worked. It is very frustrating. I haven't changed any settings (that I can remember!).

I tried reading through all these posts but they quickly lost meaning to me…too much that didn't pertain to a solution.

Was this ever resolved?

Thank you

Makers

@user_reh - No resolution/fix from Quicken that I'm aware of. Apparently only a few of us have reported this issue. I'm of the opinion Quicken changed something on their end of the transfers such that the local application no longer makes the vender category associations it had til now. I've been slowly recompiling those as new transfers come in.

jacobs

I have the same problem. It started sometime in May 2024. Downloaded transactions no longer auto populate the categories. This is has always worked. It is very frustrating. I haven't changed any settings (that I can remember!). Was this ever resolved?

@user_reh Did you report the problem to Quicken via "Report a Problem" on the Help menu? It seems only a small number of people are seeing this issue, and the folks at Quicken may not be aware for may not have a handle on what happened to affect just a small subset of users. While you don't receive any acknowledgement or reply to "Report a Problem" submissions, it's the only way (other than going through Quicken Support) to have an issue investigated. Anyone who has experienced this issue should use "Report a Problem" to provide as much detail as you can about what changed for you and when.

lchriste

To Quicken Support: Yes, others are experiencing the issue where downloaded transactions no longer autofill categories as they were previously. Even if categories are manually filled again, subsequent downloads are not auto filling those categories. Please dig a little deeper here and correct this obvious re-setting or re-programming associated with recent updates or advise how to go back to versions that functioned. This happened just after my subscription renewed —I certainly expected better. Quicken version is 7.7.1 Build 707.53346.100 using Mac OS Monterey. Again, this was functioning reliably prior to the updates!!!! I am now needing to manually supply categories for a third download. As remarked, this seriously reduces the usefulness of Quicken downloads. Please check with engineering prior to any more suggestions unless there is a definite setting not mentioned above (e.g.Quicken connected services boxes all checked, no rules created).

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, though we apologize that you are experiencing this.

We have forwarded this issue to the proper channels to have this further investigated. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) a sanitized copy of your data file in order to contribute to the investigation.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.    

jacobs

To Quicken Support: Yes, others are experiencing the issue… 

@lchriste Just so you're aware, this website is NOT Quicken Support. It's a community forum with mostly fellow Quicken users trying to share experiences and help each other, and a handful of Quicken moderators who keep things organized and help answer some questions. Should you wish to contact Quicken Support in the future, there is a link at the top of this page.

In any case, a moderator has confirmed that the reports in this thread have been passed on to the development team. As her post states, you should definitely use "Submit a Problem" of the Help menu inside Quicken Mac if you haven't previously. These types of issues which appear to affect only a small number of users can be hard to diagnose, so the more reports and data they receive, the better the chances they can figure out what's going on.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

For our teams to further investigate the issue, we do need you to send log files. Please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) a sanitized copy of your data file in order to contribute to the investigation.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.    

Makers

Hi @Quicken Kristina - As I'm sure you saw above, I'm hesitant to send log files. Hopefully you can track down a change made on the server side, or in a recent update to the app, that could cause this result. I'm still getting uncategorized transactions though admittedly fewer. My thinking is the vendor is being parsed more literally than before on one side or the other.

Makers

All - It's become very clear to me that something changed in the software such that category associations are no longer made unless the payee field is IDENTICAL to one where an association was previous made and saved. An extra word or slightly different character string causes a transaction to appear as uncategorized. Some of my transactions are being categorized now as I rebuild the database(?), but the rest are not. This continues to be painful.

user_reh

I'm having the same problem w/categories no longer auto filling. I'm also having the problem where renaming rules not longer work. This is so frustrating. Does anyone know an answer to these problems yet?

Quicken David

@user_reh if you could submit a feedback report (Help > Report a Problem…) that includes a Sanitized File, that would help the development team to identify the issue. Thanks!

lquixdra

I am having this problem too…all of a sudden, NONE of my transactions are being categorized even though I have used Quicken since the '90s, like @Makers - very frustrating

Makers

Quick(en) update - I'm still having this issue whenever a payee's name is at all different from a prior import. In other words, Quicken has lost its ability to take an educated guess.