I’m starting to get a bit frustrated with the lack of feature parity between Excel and Google in Tiller. Unless I’ve missed it somewhere, I’m assuming we do not have the same functionality as the Google Sheets version to automatically rename descriptions in transaction rows using AutoCat or some other tool?
Is there a way to still accomplish this without any add-ons?
AutoCat is available for Excel:
Now Available: AutoCat for Microsoft Excel - News & Announcements - Tiller Community (tillerhq.com)
Right but I don’t believe it has the Advanced Rule Builder like the Google version does which allows you to rename descriptions/payees in the transactions sheet. I could be mistaken but don’t see it anywhere.
Ahh, looks like you’re partially right. AutoCat for Microsoft Excel | Tiller Help Center (tillerhq.com) says they don’t have the advanced rules in the sidebar UI, but you can still create the rules in the AutoCat sheet (which is how I always doing it anyway). So just create a “Description Contains” column in your AutoCat sheet and enter what you want it to look for, then enter what to change it to in the Description column.
Perfect, thanks worked. Appreciate it.
I built my own autocat function in Excel a long time ago. The Tiller Autocat will not work on my spreadsheet i suppose because I moved things around and customized too much. I tried and it always fails. I suspect that the Excel spreadsheet will catch up with GoogleSheets since Microsoft gave up on Microsoft Money and sent everyone to Tiller. Big win for Tiller. I wish there was more transparency as to how their autocat other sheets work so that i could add the functionality to my spreadsheet.
As @jpfieber says, @MoMoney99, the Autocat execution in the sheet (even with advanced rules) is the same between the platforms. But, you are correct that there is not currently parity in the sidebar rule-creation UX. One cheat may be to create an empty linked Google Sheet spreadsheet and experiment with the Rule Builder there. You could then recreate any added columns and rules into your Excel spreadsheet until you get the hang of creating them on your own. They will work the same once in the Autocat sheets.
If Autocat isn’t working in your Excel workbook, @ronnieK, I recommend you just rename your existing AutoCat worksheet (for archival purposes) and allow the add-in to create a fresh, new worksheet for you. You can build from there.
Can you elaborate on this? I have a “Description Contains” column in my autocat sheet for excel, but I don’t get how I then go to “enter what to change it to in the Description column” as you say. Are you suggesting to create a new column in the Autocat sheet, and that will somehow magically change my Description in my transactions sheet? Or… what? I’d really like to be able to rename my Descriptions automatically. 
EDIT: I just found the resource I needed - this is a great run down of everything the Autocat tool can do on Excel. More powerful than I anticipated! AutoCat for Microsoft Excel | Tiller Help Center
What if there is no “Description” column in my AutoCat sheet? I only have five columns: Category, Description Contains, Account Contains, Institution Contains, Amount Min, Amount Max. According to the documentation, there should be a Description column to automatically modify the transaction description, but I don’t see one. I’ve reinstalled a new AutoCat sheet in Excel a couple of times and still don’t have anything.
@bdmu94 You should be able to add any columns you need (at least that’s how it works in the Google Sheets version). Try naming the first blank column ‘Description’, add a rule that modifies the Description and give it a try!
I’m not sure why this isn’t in the Foundation Template. It literally requires nothing more than adding a column titled “Description,” but it was surprisingly hard to figure out how to do that - it wouldn’t let me add them to the right of the existing columns, and when I added it next to the “Description Contains” column, it somehow picked up some data validation requirements and gave me an error message. I finally successfully added it between “Institution Contains” and “Amount Min.” It now seems to be working great for renaming.
A couple of notes for anyone else doing this: 1) if you already have applied categories, make sure you change the settings to run on all transactions, not just uncategorized, after the first time you add your renaming column; and 2) if, like me, you have a lot of transactions that start with the name of the business and then have a bunch of junk after, and some of the entries have weird capitalization, you could put the actual business/service name in Description Contains, and then in Description, use this formula: =PROPER(B2), then copy that formula down. So if the transaction description is “classpass* monthly” and you just want “Classpass,” type classpass in the Description Contains, and the formula will make the Description Classpass.