Error parsing file

[Geert Janssens]

On woensdag 3 augustus 2011, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Corey Hedge <Toadlips at wowway.com> writes:
> > Following the OPENING BALANCE theme, I did some checking today, and
> > that is indeed the key!  I was able to verify in GnuCash v2.4.7 that
> > if you create a New Account and you select the Opening Balance tab and
> > put in an incomplete date (i.e. 7/1 rather than 7/1/11), the date of
> > the transaction becomes corrupted and appears as some sort of serial
> > number in the ledger (i.e. 001-1751183688 instead of 7/1!)  I noticed
> > this when I was initially creating my accounts, but I just overwrote
> > the serial number with the proper date and went on my merry way --
> > only to experience the dreaded "error parsing the file"!!
> > 
> > At any rate, I'm not sure if this affects only Win7 or if this is a
> > known bug.  But, if it's not, I will file a formal bug report tonight
> > (unless the devs just happen upon this).
> 
> Please file this as a bug report.
> 
No, that's not necessary. It's a known problem [1] and has been fixed in the 
development branch. Unfortunately these fixes can't be backported easily.

Since we can expect some more users hitting this problem, I did add a section 
in the GnuCash faq [2] explaining how to recover from this error.

Geert

[1] refer to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=611853
[2] refer to 
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_When_I_try_to_open_my_datafile_on_Windows.2C_I_get_.22Parse_error.22._What_happened_.3F