why/how the memo field gets changed on a downloaded transaction with a renaming rule

SetSee

BACKGROUND to my question:  I’m playing with the latest Quicken Deluxe for Windows using a 2nd PC and a restored backup file from my 1st PC, before committing to upgrading my to the current 2013 version—I am cautious because I have 30 years of Quicken data that is very important to me, and so much has changed in the program from the 2013 version to the current one, and I do not yet understand how many things work.

So: I’m experimenting with renaming rules and have gotten them to work for the Payee (as long as the rule is defined before I download any transactions).  E.g., my bank records my purchases at a local store as being paid to “PETSMART MILLBURN NJ” so I created a rule to change that to PetSmart.  When I download new transactions from the bank, the Payee field gets renamed correctly per the rule, but Quicken also places a string  containing the last 4 digits of the credit card account number in the Memo field, like this:

Why?  There is no value in that at all—the account number is on the account for all these transactions and is not needed in the transaction.  Who designed this?  (If anything, I would think Quicken would take the Memo field from any memorized transaction that matched the correct/renamed payee.)  Indeed, in another account, a renaming rule worked as specified and the Memo field was made to match the value used in the memorized transaction.

I can find no help about this problem in any support pages.  How do I prevent it from happening or change the behavior?

Chris_QPW

Renaming rules are about the payee, not the memo, so I suspect the two aren't related to what you are describing.

If you select this icon, you can turn on the Downloaded Memo field and I suspect you will find that it is your financial institution that is sending that account number in the memo (the "Downloaded" is what Quicken got from the financial institution).

The processing of the memo works this way.

If you have a memo in your Memorized Payee that gets matched to a downloaded transaction, that memo will be used. But note that if your Memorized Payee has the memo blank, that is considered "unset" instead "use blank", for the next rule.

If there is a Downloaded memo, that will be used if the Memorized Payee's memo is blank, or you don't have a Memorized Payee.

So, what to do if you don't want that Downloaded Memo? Luckly a few years ago they put in a new feature.

Go to the Account Details → Online Services tab and select "Don't update memo when downloading".