Reports not remembering column widths

MSStateDawg

I create a new Itemized Category report with about 12 categories selected. All accounts and payees are selected. The date range is set to Monthly. I adjust the column widths, save the report, then close it. When reopened, the column widths aren't saved.

What am I doing wrong?

Jim_Harman

You are not doing anything wrong, that is the way Quicken works. There have Idea posts requesting the the widths be saved when you save a report, but they have all been closed. Quicken made improvements to some but not all of the reports. Here were my comments at that time:

I ran a quick test in R43.14 and I found that some reports save changes to column widths and some do not. Here is an incomplete list:

Column widths not saved:

Cash Flow

Cash flow by Tag

Income & Expense by Category

Column widths saved

Banking Transaction

Investment Transaction

Capital Gains

Asset Allocation

Investment Performance

Account Balances  - account column with saved but not data columns 

Net Worth - same as Account Balances

Column widths are fixed


Investment Income

Investing Activity

For the reports where the widths were saved, the changes also affect the built-in or template report and any saved reports based on the template. In other words, changes to the column widths are global for all reports based on that template. I think this behavior was introduced earlier this year (2022) because the Banking and Investment Transaction reports are used as pop-ups when you double click on data in other reports. Users wanted to be able to set the column widths once, and this is an improvement IMO.

For all the other reports, I think users should have the ability to adjust and save the column widths separately for each saved version of the report.

Unfortunately, reporting a problem here will not generally trigger any action by Quicken. I suggest you and anyone else with this problem report the issue using the Help > Report a Problem link and also contact Quicken Support directly. Be sure the support agent understands the problem and gives you a ticket number for future reference.

You will not get a response if you only use Report a problem, Quicken uses the Report a Problem submissions for statistical purposes and to help diagnose the issue.

dankobaly

I've been using Quicken over 30 years, and this is my number one complaint (after lost transactions in both current and past years).

I'm a tax accountant. In order to review and adjust category assignment, I "drill down" (using the "spy glass") on a category total to see the individual transactions that make up the total. At that point, the default column assignments are totally stupid—"Num" is about 2 inches wide for check numbers; "Description" is about 5 characters wide; "Tag" is 3 inches wide; "Clr" is an inch and a half wide for the character "c"; "Memo" is so small you can't read the column name; "Amount" is often not wide enough to handle amounts in the thousands of dollars.

So I adjust the column widths in order to be able to see the Account, Description, and Amount fields; often requiring shrinking the over-sized columns.

Then I drill down on a transaction to see what is in the bank ledger in order to re-categorize the transaction; and the report window is minimized.

Then when I re-maximize the report window, BAM— back to stupid column widths.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

This wastes hours of time and is incredibly frustrating.

Philip von Gontard

I couldn't agree more. This problem is very frustrating and time consuming. I would think it would be so easy to fix to freeze the columns at the latest settings.