Michael
Tue Sep 21 17:58:12 CDT 2004
Live and learn! I didn't know this.
Thanks.
--
Michael Gordon
MVP
"Tommy Becker" <twbecker@nc.removeme.rr.com> wrote in message
news:u14lUqCoEHA.2948@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> Dick,
> You are aware that you can autocomplete works on subcategories too, aren't
> you? For instance, to select Food : Dining Out, I can just type "din" and
> Money will fill in both category and subcategory appropriately. Am I
> missing something?
>
> Dick Watson wrote:
>> Are you talking something that has an abbreviation (Food:Dining Out,
>> abbreviation Dining) or are you talking a top level category of Dining
>> Out
>> (of which I don't have one)?
>>
>> I don't know all (any) of the category abbreviations. After ten years, I
>> only know/have created maybe three abbreviations and those are all for
>> payees. Abbreviations are, by definition, non-obvious. Food:Dining Out is
>> what shows up. That's "direct input". The human factors folks like that
>> simply because it is obvious. It also saves you from having to remember
>> an
>> "entry" category and a "real" category and having to do mental
>> transposition
>> all of the time.
>>
>> fo [tab] di gets me there in dual list. Now it takes fo [shift]+; di.
>> (I'm
>> doing this from memory so I may not have the effects of autocomplete
>> right).
>> And that's an EASY one. Try editing a transaction where the [shift]+; no
>> longer does you any good unless you are starting over. If you are
>> entering
>> transactions by hand, [tab] is a key you get pretty used to using. Shift
>> +
>> anything is almost never necessary except for a new payee name or
>> occasionally in a memo.
>>
>> Let me give you another example. Almost very time I enter a Di (payee
>> Diamond Shamrock) transaction, I have to change the classification. This
>> is
>> because I almost never fill the same car with gas twice in a row. With
>> dual
>> list it's all tabs, the letters di, tab, the amount, some more tabs, one
>> letter (in the subclass; my classification is like Automobile:CR-V) and
>> then
>> enter. Single list now requires [backspace] au [shift]+; and the single
>> letter.
>>
>> But it doesn't really matter nearly so much as ten years of muscle memory
>> to
>> enter this stuff. I.e., it's ALL ABOUT what you are used to; what you may
>> well find easier I may well not and it's all a matter of our
>> conditioning.
>> It took me probably five or six months to get to the point where I rarely
>> started typing a classification in the stupid Memorize this transaction
>> checkbox they added in the middle of the tab order for transactions back
>> in
>> M04 (or was it M03). There was some functional purpose for that change,
>> even
>> though I disagree that it needed to be put in the middle of a
>> pre-existing
>> tab order and I consider it just annoying cluttering and duplication of
>> function available (but maybe not discoverable by the cluefully
>> challenged)
>> dozens of other ways already.
>>
>> But it seems likely that this option was removed for no good reason. It
>> doesn't change in the slightest what ultimately is stored. It was just a
>> change to be arbitrary and to force users to work one way. I see no way
>> that
>> this change did ANYTHING for the product but remove a layer of
>> variability
>> for the support system to deal with and a layer of "looks complicated"
>> that
>> most all new users never saw anyway.
>>
>> "Tommy Becker" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:321e01c4a001$3b4e86b0$a501280a@phx.gbl...
>>
>>>How do you figure? I type entries and I've always used
>>>single list. "Di" gets me dining out. With the dual
>>>list, you have 2 fields to type, how is that faster?
>>>
>>>
>>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>>Which feature? Single list? Got me. It probably
>>>
>>>seems "simpler" or "less
>>>
>>>>complicated" somehow to people in the usability lab.
>>>
>>>The "Dual List"? It's a
>>>
>>>>whole lot faster for typed entry.
>>
>>