Batch account assignment

[Christopher Meredith]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Christopher Meredith
<chmeredith at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Christopher Meredith <chmeredith at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm really bad about assigning transactions to the proper accounts. I
>>> usually have to go in and do months at a time to catch up. What I
>>> would like to know is whether it is possible to do a search then
>>> assign all the results to an expense account rather than doing each
>>> one individually. So I would like to search for all transactions in
>>> which the word "Comcast" appears in the description field, then assign
>>> all the results to the account Expenses:Utilities:Internet. Is this
>>> possible?
>>
>> No, there's no way to operate on multiple transactions at once.  You
>> should do this when the transactions get entered in the first place.
>> This is why the register has QuickFill, so that when you enter a Comcast
>> transaction it will take the last Comcast transaction and 'reuse' the
>> values (including the transfer account).
>>
>> If you're importing, then you should spend the time in the importer to
>> properly assign the transactions.
>>
>>> Thanks!
>>
>>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
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>
> I was afraid of that. I do importing with aqbanking for everything. I
> have something like 2500 transactions I need to catch up on. Looks
> like I'm in for an enjoyable afternoon...

One thought. If I'm using the MySQL backend, shouldn't it be possible
to accomplish this result with some crafty SQL?