Underscore Categories Don't Show Up in Category Boxes

Question

I can see clearly in my list of Categories, there's a bunch of them with "_" as the first character, e.g. "_401Contrib".  There's some odd behavior I've noticed:

* If I try to do a bulk edit, and go to the Category box, and type "_" it immediately comes back with "Category not found"
* If I put in a manual transaction, same thing - I can't enter that Category
* I have a bunch of entries using some of those categories…but if I go to those transactions and those splits and I try to edit them, I still do not see any of the "_" categories…even if there's already an entry there with that category.  So for instance, if I go to a transaction in my checking account where I made an entry and it shows "_401Contrib", if I start typing in that same dialog box "_" it won't recognize it as an existing category

Could this have something to do with the fact that I converted my Quicken from PC to MAC?

jacobs · Answer

The question was about Quicken Mac. Those underscore categories are not used in Quicken Mac; they exist when converting from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac. Quicken Mac investment transactions also use special, protected categories; you can see them if you look at the Window > Categories list, as the subcategories of Investments. Those categories can't be used manually, can't be edited, can't be deleted. Quicken Mac automatically assigns the correct category to transactions internally, but users specify a transaction Type rather than categories for investment transactions.

If the conversion from Windows worked correctly, your investment transactions were converted to the Mac type investment transactions. As a result, many of those old underscore categories may no longer be used; you can delete any of these categories which show zero uses in the Categories list. For the ones which show they are in use, the steps you'll take depend what transactions these are. If you give a few examples, we can suggest how to deal with them.

For instance you, mentioned a transaction in your checking account which is a 401k contribution. Is that transaction also a transfer to your 401k account? If so, you can eliminate the category, as Quicken Mac doesn't utilize categories on transfer transactions. You'll likely need to edit these transactions one at a time, unfortunately, but at least you can  make sure you're changing them correctly. What other such transactions do you have?

I have a similar issue with categories from the prior generation of Quicken Mac, which had investment categories that began with a bullet instead of an underscore. I was able to delete some of those which were unused. But I have about 100 old transactions for dividend income, interest income, and K-1 income which I recorded as basic banking deposit transactions rather than investment-type transactions decades ago; I've just left them alone.

NotACPA · Answer

Those underscore categories are used internally by Q for actions such as _Div, _LGCapGn, and the _401Contrib that you referenced.  They should NEVER be changed by the user, since they're used internally.

You access them by using the associated transaction, and if you click "Show Hidden Categories", you'll see that there's a plethora of them.