Missing Categories! Help

I’m brand new and wanting in tech experience. I’ve done a very bad thing and have gone ahead and rearranged all renamed all my categories and have unleashed havoc. I’ve read everything online, have watched youtube, deleted everything with a red triangle, but, alas, still some of my categories are not showing up on the transactions page. Please, help!

Just when i thought I’d found the perfect budgeting app!

HI @johnny:

Ha! We’ve all made mistakes in our sheets. Part of the process, and you HAVE found the perfect budgeting app. Welcome to Tiller. Just some slight bumps as it settles in for your uses.

Some ideas…recall that if you have categorized transactions on the Transactions sheet and then change the name of your categories on the Categories sheet, you’ll see a red triangle in the cells on the Transactions sheet where the Category assignments no long match the roster. This is expected and easy to resolve.

Best option scenario at the end of this note, but for now, try this as one solution:

  1. Begin with the Categories sheet and, reviewing all, confirm that your list of Categories is final (for now…you can ALWAYS change these as your needs change.)
  2. Go back to the Transactions sheet and take a look at the drop down list of any cell in the Category column. Confirm that all of your Categories appear in the drop-down list. (If they do not, reach out to the tech team in a private chat and ask them to review your file…they are terrifically responsive.)
    3 Assuming your drop down list is accurate, matches the roster on your Categories sheet, and the cells on your Transactions sheet with category errors remain with the red triangle in each, you should be able to simply select the drop down in each of the error-flagged cells and select the correct category. Given your situation, this is the most direct approach to correcting the errors you see.
  3. If you have groups of transactions to correct with new categories, use the filter option for the sheet to isolate the transactions with one of the incorrect category names. Then correct the top-most row of these with the correct category and drag that category-name correction downward in the category column over all the filtered transactions. Repeat with another group of the incorrect category names by resetting the filter to isolate those. (Saves a lot of time.)
  4. Finally, in the future when you want to change a category name or merge it with another and update it everywhere, use the Change Category tool. You will find it in the Tiller Money Labs Add-on | Tools | Rename Category. It is really easy to use and highly effective. (BUT…don’t use it a solution now. It won’t work, because the tool works within the Category sheet data and, while it will recategorize transactions after changes are made, it won’t correct errors in the Transactions sheet where categories there are missing in the Category roster.)

This is just one way to approach the challenges you described. Does this help?

Thanks, so much, Brad. Really helpful. Alas, the drop down category list is indeed not including the new categories. I’ll try to reach out to tech support. Thanks again.

@johnny Sorry. I should have searched the community before answering. Here’s a good set of rules to follow when the category drop down isn’t working. See if this helps.

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