Can one just Delete Payees, Renaming Rules and QuickFill Rules?
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GarySzy
Member ✭✭
My QuickFill rules are putting incorrect or unwanted information in my downloaded transactions. I have 1551 rules. It is very time consuming to change each one. Can I just delete all the rules and let the Quicken application just recreate them all over with new rules? Can I do the same with the payees? I have 4285 payees.
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Best Answer
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Yes, you can delete QuickFill rules — all of them, if you want. Just keep in mind that you will need to fill in categories for your regular transactions for awhile to build up a new library of QuickFill rules.
No, you cannot delete Payees. In Quicken Mac, the Payees you see in the Payee window are linked in the database to the transactions they were used for, so deleting the Payee would leave you with transactions with no Payee in your database. But you can Hide Payees, so they won't show up in the pop-up list of possible Payees when you're entering a transaction. When you click the — button in the Payees window, which you'd expect to mean delete, in this case it means Hide. (If the "Show Hidden" checkbox at the top of the Payees window is checked, you'll still see hidden Payees in that window, with a checkmark in the Hidden column; if you uncheck the "Show Hidden" checkbox, then the Payees window will hide all the Payees you'd made hidden.)Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930
Answers
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Yes, you can delete QuickFill rules — all of them, if you want. Just keep in mind that you will need to fill in categories for your regular transactions for awhile to build up a new library of QuickFill rules.
No, you cannot delete Payees. In Quicken Mac, the Payees you see in the Payee window are linked in the database to the transactions they were used for, so deleting the Payee would leave you with transactions with no Payee in your database. But you can Hide Payees, so they won't show up in the pop-up list of possible Payees when you're entering a transaction. When you click the — button in the Payees window, which you'd expect to mean delete, in this case it means Hide. (If the "Show Hidden" checkbox at the top of the Payees window is checked, you'll still see hidden Payees in that window, with a checkmark in the Hidden column; if you uncheck the "Show Hidden" checkbox, then the Payees window will hide all the Payees you'd made hidden.)Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
Thanks for the great info! Much appreciated.0
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I've got one more suggestion. Now, or after you've got a good set of rules recreated, you may want to uncheck the following two Preferences settings:
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s1 -
Isn't there an easy way in Q Mac to rename Payees or merge Payee Names into one?
Let's say you have dozens of variations of
"POS TRANS 070119 STARBU",
"POS TRANS 070219 STARBU",
"POS TRANS 070319 STARBU",
etc., one for each time you visited Starbucks for a cup of coffee?Can't you easily merge them into one Payee Name entry, "Starbucks"? Looks to me as if using Renaming Rules and applying them to past transactions should whittle your overgrown lists down to manageable size in a hurry.Of course, before making changes that apply to large numbers of transactions, do be sure to have or create a backup of your data file ... just in case something were to go wrong.0 -
Yes, one can absolutely merge multiple Payees into one if desired. The original poster didn't ask about merging transactions, but it's certainly a way to clean up a Payee list if there are duplicates of the type you mention, or if one wants to go through their Payee list looking for mis-typed duplicates.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930
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[Removed - Violation of Community Guidelines]
Can someone show me how to merge, please?
[Edited for Readability]
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@4pickering Hey, we're just fellow users here and voluntary participants in the forum. I'll be glad to show you how to merge Payees. I just want to mention that @jacobs provides perhaps the largest number of detailed explanatory posts of any other QMac superuser. He may just not have had time on this particular day. Please be kind.
Now, on to how to merge Payees:- Open the Payees window (menu Window > Payees & Rules).
- Select two or more payees in the list using standard Mac Command-Click.
- If possible, it's helpful to narrow the list using the search box at the top so that the payees you want to select are closer together in the list.
- Click the Merge Payees button at the bottom.
- You will be presented a window showing the current usage of each payee and which one you want the payees merged into.
- Select the target payee name from the list.
- Click MERGE.
- If you make a mistake, these actions can be undone (menu Edit > Undo) in reverse order as long as you don't close Quicken.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s1 -
@4pickering Just to explain the sequence in this thread… The original poster asked a question about mass removal of Payees and Rules, and that’s what I answered. Then another user suggested merging as another way to reduce the number of Payees, and I agreed. I didn’t explain how because (a) the original user hadn’t asked about that, (b) the person who brought it up is a regular here who I know to be a Quicken Windows user who knows how to merge Payees, and (c) it can make replies to a user's question feel overwhelming if we provide too many details about unasked related questions which may or may not be relevant. Had the original user, or anyone else, asked “hmmm, so how do I merge Payees?”, I would have been happy to answer. Instead, you chose to attack and criticize because I wasn't a mind-reader anticipating that you wanted a question — which had never been asked — answered. All you had to do was ask. 😉
Since @RickO graciously answered the question, I’ll just add one quick tip: answers to many “how do I…” questions are contained in the program’s Help. Quicken’s online Help doesn’t provide detailed explanations for complex issues, but for basic knowledge about program features, it can be quite useful. In this case, selecting Quicken Help and searching for “merge payees” provides a good short explanation. (But the answer from RickO is better and more complete.)Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19932
This discussion has been closed.