GNUcash Save As Problem

[linas@linas.org]

It's been rumoured that Richard Court said:
> 
> All,
> 
> I downloaded a qif file for the period from Jan 1 - Feb 27, 2001 and saved it as PCF20010227.qif in my /home/richard/PCF directory. I then imported this file in Canadian dollars. When I tried to save it, I accidently clicked SAVE and it saved a translog.20010227093419.log file to my /home/richard directory. 

You can mostly ignore & delete the *.log files.  They are possibly
useful if gnucash crashes during a save, in which case you might be 
able to use them to reconstruct things by hand.  But this is a 
difficult proceedure, and not at all needed if you have the original qif.
And if gnucash was successful during the save, then the .log files are
almost completely useless ...

> I really wanted it to be saved to /home/richard/PCF and I subsequently
> chose the SAVE AS option but didn't know what to call the file. I called
> it translog20010227 
poor choice of name: something like 'mypcf' might have been better.

> and it created a bunch of translog files - one with
> no extension, one .log, and one .xac. Did I save it correctly (i.e., are
> there a total of three files for each save?). What are the purpose of
> these various files? 

The .xac is an 'automatic backup copy', one gets created every time you
save.  Its a fully valid copy of your finances as of the datestamp on
it.  You can open it as an ordinary gnucash file.

> The discrepancies between my first SAVE and my
> second SAVE AS has me puzzled (one file verses three files). What should
> I have called the SAVE AS file? 

Anything you want.
e.g. /home/richard/PCF/mynewbankstatements.xac
or just 
mystuff.xac (which would go into the current directory.)

But typically, wouldn't you be merging new qif's into the existing
gnucash file, and so you wouldn't really be doing (need to do) a 'save
as'.? 

> How do I check to see if GNUcash is picking up the .qif file in my /home/richard/PCF directory and not in the other directory?

? presumably that's what you typed in?

> The PCF directory will obviously get quite busy with future downloads. Is this the best way to handle saving files for the long term?

If you come up with a better idea, let us know; seriously. This will
affect many users, and it would be nice to have some default
recomendation for it ...

--linas