Any way to unmatch a downloaded transaction that was matched and accepted by mistake?

Question

I've made this mistake a few times over the many years I have been using Quicken. I know that the general suggestion here is to restore from a previous backup, which is how I typically deal with this, but the last time this happened was kind of a "last straw" for me, as this is an easy mistake to make, but very much a PITA to correct. It seems to me like this should be easy to correct - there should be a simple way to unmatch a downloaded transaction even after it has been matched and accepted, provided you are still in the process of reconciling a fresh download.

So my first question is whether or not there already is a way to do this which I have somehow missed for the last 20 years, and if not, why not?? Is there any reason that I am missing as to why this would not be a good feature to request?

Jim_Harman · Answer

I am trying to understand what situation you are trying to recover from. Is it that there was a banking transaction already in your register, a different transaction was downloaded and Quicken matched it to the existing transaction, and you incorrectly accepted the match?

I think in this case, the amounts would have to be the same and the dates close. The downloaded transaction would be removed from the Downloaded Transactions area and the existing transaction would be marked as Cleared. So essentially you want to un-accept the match so that you can enter the downloaded transaction as a separate transaction or match it to a different transaction?

I don't think I have ever run into this situation. As far as I know, there is no easy way to recover from it. You must review downloaded transactions carefully before accepting them.

kconklin · Answer

Sure you can do that, but it doesn't help you in the case where the matched download is a new transaction that you don't feel like entering by hand. This is really an inconvenience complaint, not a "no way to work around it" complaint. After having had to correct mistakes like this various times over the last 20 years my brain basically just snapped to asking why there isn't a one-click way to fix this. I find it hard to believe I'm the only person who has been frustrated by this. Thanks for the response, BTW.

NotACPA · Answer

Why can't you simply correct the CLR value in the incorrect transaction to " " (blank) and the should-be transaction to "c"?