importing a spreadsheet?

[Bill Gribble]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 11:45:53PM -0500, John Lusk wrote:
> I actually found documentation on the Intuit site for the QIF
> format.  (As a software engineer, I sure wouldn't want to develop
> from that spec, but it's the best I could find.)

I wrote the QIF import code for gnucash, and let me tell you, that
spec is not only inadequate, incomplete, and ambiguous but also
ignored by many QIF files :( Lots of trial and error in the
development.

> It actually seems to work, except... my descriptions (memos?) aren't
> making it through (and the amounts have the wrong sign, but I think I
> can fix that).  So, can someone tell me (a) what I did wrong, and (b)
> what I *should* have read to find out more?

Descriptions and memos are different.  The Quicken 'P' (payee) field
maps to the Gnucash 'Description'; there's one Description per
transaction and likewise one Payee.  The Quicken 'M' field maps to the
Gnucash Memo; there's one Memo per *split* in both Q and Gnucash.

> Here's a sample transaction (the first one, actually):
> 
> !Type:Bank
> D06/20/1999
> N2124
> T7.71
> LHongsuk
> MWarburton
> ^
> 
> The transaction actually gets imported (to a checking acct of type
> BANK), but the description field is blank (I'm expecting
> "Warburton").

Try setting your register display to "Multi-line" mode ("Transaction
Journal" in the 1.5.x series) under the Register/Style menu and you'll
see the memo associated with each split.  Your QIF file fragment is
better formed than many exported by commercial programs so I'm sure
the memo is there :)

Thanks,
Bill Gribble