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Searhing for transactions in a category and NOT in its subcategories

This is a dumb little problem: I have a bunch of transactions in a category C and I need to subdivide them [so I can do some better reporting] into C:A and C:B. Step 1 was easy enough: I did a "find all" for category C, went through and selected all the A-trans and re-categoried them and then did the same with the B-trans. I think that it was all OK, but I might have missed a few (there were >300 transactions in C) so I wanted to do a check on the transactions *left* in category C and not-yet moved either to C:A or C:B. I can't find a way to do that. If I search for C it gets C, C:A _and C:B.

The only way I've come up with to do it is to make two new/fake categories, BB and AA, and move all the C:A trans to AA, C:B to BB and *NOW* searching for C should show only the ones I missed. Then when everything's set, I just transfer BB->C:B, AA->C:A and delete AA and BB. A little klunky but it'll do the job -- but I was wondering: is there a more elegant way to do this kind of thing? Thanks!!

/Bernie\

Reply to
Bernie Cosell
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Create a transaction report and customize it to show transactions for category C Customize further under Matching Categories, and insert ~: This will search for all instances of C without a : (subcategory)

Reply to
Jim Jensen

I think there are three easier ways to get what you're looking for.

Assuming that when you say "search", you are talking about the "Find" in "Find/Replace"; I believe you accepted the default value for "Match if:", which is "Contains". If you select "Exact" for "Match if" you should get only transactions with the category "Salary" (no subcategories).

You can also use the Cash Flow (or Banking) Transaction report and enter "=Salary" in the "Matching" "Category contains" box on the Categories tab in the Customize dialog.

Then there's the Category List (assuming you don't have Q2007 or Q2008): if you select the main category Salary, the "Transaction Usage" area in the lower right of the list will show all uses of "Salary"; both as a main category and in conjunction with any subcategories.

Reply to
John Pollard

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