How can I combine Categories? (Q Mac)
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traversom1
Member ✭✭
Noticed I have two categories with identical names, not sure how that happened.
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Best Answer
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I doubt they really have the same name. There's probably a space character or other nonprinting character embedded in one of the names. In any case, click menu Window > Categories. Select both categories (use Command-Click) then click the Merge button at the bottom of the window.
This may not apply to QM2017, I don't remember. If not, I think you can trigger a merge by renaming one to match the other. In your case, I'd rename the first to something totally different. Then rename the 2nd the same. After they merge, change it back to what you want.Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0
Answers
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I doubt they really have the same name. There's probably a space character or other nonprinting character embedded in one of the names. In any case, click menu Window > Categories. Select both categories (use Command-Click) then click the Merge button at the bottom of the window.
This may not apply to QM2017, I don't remember. If not, I think you can trigger a merge by renaming one to match the other. In your case, I'd rename the first to something totally different. Then rename the 2nd the same. After they merge, change it back to what you want.Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
Thank you1
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The categories have exactly the same names but the Quicken protected one has an "Investments" sub-category and I can't put the same named categories together without any sub-category.0
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@HDHD1818 To clarify, do you have a user-created category that is the same name as one of the subcategories of the top-level "Investments" category?
If so, the "Investments" top-level category, and all of its subcategories, are what Quicken calls "Required" categories. You can see this in the Status column of the Categories window (menu Window > Categories). Required categories cannot be modified, moved, renamed or merged.
Therefore, you can't merge your user-created category with any required category.
What you can do, however, is to change the user-created category to the required one in all transactions that use it. The user-created category will then be unused and you can delete it, leaving only the required category.
To change the category:- In Quicken Preferences, make sure you have category names set to display Long Names (exactly where this is in Preferences depends on which version of QMac you are using). This is so you can distinguish between your user-created category "MyCat" and the required one "Investments:MyCat".
- Select a group register (eg. Investments) that you know will contain all uses of the user-created category and display transactions.
- Click the magnifying glass, top right, and limit the search to Category or Description/Category.
- Enter the name of your user-created category in the search box.
- Sort the register by Category by clicking the Category column header. You will now be displaying only transactions using your user-created category and the required Investments category. Scan the register to make sure this is true.
- Select all transactions (menu Edit > Select All)
- Click menu File > Get Info
- In the Category box, it will say "multiple values". Replace this with the required category name in the form "Investments:MyCat". Click OK.
One caveat: the above will not fix any cases where the category is used in a split transactions. You will need to identify and change each of those individually.
Before starting any of this, be sure to make a backup of your file in a safe location so you can restore it in case anything goes wrong.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s1
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