Classes: merging two equivalent names

Your choices are the Recategorize or the Find & Replace functions. You will have to perform the operation on each Category/Class combination

- ratther tedious if you have very many combinations.

FWIW, Classes became Tags in QW08 [same functionality] and there is now a Retag function - just what you need for your exercise.

There are some differences; one is (I believe) you can now have two tags simultaneously in effect for the same transaction; CLASSES was limited to one. I think this is right, one of the reasons I moved to Q2008 so early. (Unfortunately, the reporting of tags isn't as clean as the assignments.....)

Actually, earlier versions of Quicken did allow multiple "Classes" to be assigned to the same transaction. [I just checked using Q2004 H&B.]

Well, I believe you. That's why I said I thought! I don't have old versions hanging around to test, and at my age, memory is going. OK - let's try this and see if I'm a liar! There's a separate field in the registers for TAGS that is new in 2008, and how about the idea that you can assign a TAG as well as a transfer account in 2008 - again, I don't THINK you could do that in 2007, could you?

Yes - the Tag field is an option. One can turn it off and the display reverts to the old way; Category/Tag.

Yes you could do this - I used it regularly.

One new report format came with Tags [I think it's new] - Cash Flow by Tag. The default format uses categories for rows and tags for columns. One can customize to select other variables for rows & columns - a very useful report format.

Agree with Andrew's comment regarding use of multiple tags - the reporting capabilities limited.

This Tag thing is interesting.

Originally Quicken set up too few fields Then, after while they realized they needed one more field. It proved too disruptive to add 1 more field so they concocted this category/Class thing, in which Class became a poor cousin of a field. As a consequence there are certain reports you couldn't make since Class was not a field. Tag appears to finally rectify this defect. It's only my take. I am still using Q2005. John Polasek

I actually have a mea-culpa! For the whole time using multiple classes (e.g.: A and B), I had thought to assign them to the same transaction one separates them by commas in the tag field ("A,B"). WRONG! One needs to use (or I suppose could do it manually) the MULTIPLE TAG assignment drop down box so they are separated by colons ("A:B"). So, if one does it correctly, it does seem that the reporting works the way I always though it should -i.e.: if you ask for transactions for tag A, you'll get them whether they were tagged standalone, or in combination with other tags as long as they were entered correctly with the colon delineator.

So in my old (wrong) example of 'A,B', I bet I was creating a new tag totally independent of the two pieces A and B, and no wonder those transactions never showed up asking for either A or B.

So the reporting does seem to work in the manner in which I thought it would.