Simple Way to Rename Categories?

I’m adjusting my categories, and it seems like the easiest way to rename a category is to save the previous name, replace on the Categories sheet, then do a find and replace on the transactions sheet. Is there an easier way to go about this?

I found it rather easy to stay on the Categories sheet and keep a Find & Replace open. Filtering for only the Category column on the Transactions sheet and matching the full cell, it went fairly quickly. Not exactly single-action, but simple enough.

If you’re using Autocat for that category be sure to change it there too.

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Yes! This is why I want a single-action rename. :smiley: Wound up realizing that after I’d renamed a ton of things.

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I’m assuming you’re using the Foundations sheet. There’s a “Savings Budget” add-on sheet that contains this functionality. I don’t use Foundations so I’m not 100% sure about this, but I suspect that it would work just fine since it’s really only modifying the core sheets used by both. It’s actually intended to merge two categories together, but I’ve definitely used it to rename categories by creating a new one, then “merging” the original with it.

@randy Am I right about this?

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That’s a clever way to use the new Merge Categories workflow, @aronos. I like it.

(I believe) the Merge Categories scripts are smart enough to work on spreadsheets that don’t contain the Savings Budget, but, currently, the Savings Budget menu only shows in the Tools submenu of the add-on when the Savings Budget is installed. At some point, it would be cool to create a standalone Categories submenu that had workflows like:

  • Merge categories
  • Rename category
  • Add common categories (for specific demographics like student, empty nester, just out of college, etc)

Randy

I’d love that. Would have saved me hours! :slight_smile:

Sounds like a conversation we’ve had before :wink:

AutoCat can do some of this if you know how to set it up.

Just had an opportunity to use the Merge Categories tool to rename a few more - this should totally be part of the categories sheet/tooling!

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