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I just ran into this same problem and was able to resolve it using the following procedure:

1) Export existing Product List to Excel using the export button.

2) Remove existing items: Check all and then Batch Actions-> Make Inactive

(you may have to troubleshoot some errors here. I ended up with around 30 items I had to manually remove from parents or make inactive out of the 1,100 items I started with)

3) Go to: https://app.qbo.intuit.com/app/categories and click "Switch Now" button.

(I did not get a screen shot of this page when categories are off)

4) On the Products and Services page, go More-> Manage Categories. You should see all the "Parent Items (deleted)" are now categories. 

5) Edit or remove category names. Even if you want the Parent Items to now be the new categories, you are probably going to want to edit the "(deleted)" off the names.

6) Edit your Excel export file from Step 1. Remove the prior Parent Items. Each other item should be preceded by a category from the list you just edited and a colon symbol just like it had for parent items. "ParentItem:ChildItem" becomes "Category:Item". If you left the parent items as the new categories, you are done. If you created new categories, you need to edit to correct the format. Side notes: (a) if you migrated from desktop, under the type column, change non-inventory to noninventory. (b) if your spreadsheet has over 1,000 rows, it needs to be broken up smaller sheets before import. Hint: There are excel formulas that can speed up all edits.

7) Import updated item list with categories to QBO. On Products and Services, click the dropdown arrow next to New and select import. The next page should already have mapping.