How to View transactions prior to "Close Books"?

[David T.]

All the Close Books feature does is calculate income and expense account balances as of a particular date and create two humongous transactions--one for income and one for expenses--that zero out those accounts. You designate the Description of the transaction and decide which accounts get used as the source for the splits.

There is nothing special about these transactions, and it is a simple matter to merely delete them if you do not like the results. I know, since I have created them, deleted them, and created them again as I changed my mind about whether to close the books or not. 

The OP problem probably had something to do with the filtering or preferences, as you mentioned.

David

--- On Mon, 3/1/10, Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be> wrote:

> From: Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be>
> Subject: Re: How to View transactions prior to "Close Books"?
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Cc: "alavarre" <alavarre at gmail.com>
> Date: Monday, March 1, 2010, 8:32 AM
> On Sunday 28 February 2010, alavarre
> wrote:
> > Thanks in advance, I have searched without joy: How do
> I view transactions
> > older than the "Close Books" date?
> > 
> > :-/
> > 
> > My file was misbehaving and over 1 MB, so I thought it
> might be time to
> > close books and simplify things. So I very carefully
> saved the file under a
> > new name, then executed "Close Books" with an
> effective date of 12/31/09.
> > 
> > But the new file refuses to show any transactions
> prior to the month that I
> > did "Close Books" (February 2010) for the accounts
> that were open when I
> >  did so.
> > 
> > I can do a transaction report and see all the
> transactions back to when it
> > started (2003), and the file size hasn't changed, so I
> know they are all
> > still there. And if I open the file as root, all is
> fine. But as "andy"
> > nothing shows before February.
> > 
> > No problem, I thought, I'll just open the backup file.
> No joy! IT refuses
> >  to show older transactions.
> > 
> > What about the backup files on my offboard drive?
> Nope, same result.
> >  Nothing shows before February.
> > 
> > The offboard backup file was not loaded when I "closed
> books" so could not
> > possibly be corrupted or changed, so obviously it is a
> profile thing. If I
> > open the file as root I see everything. OK, a profile
> thing.
> > 
> > So I copy the **backup** profile (2/5/10) for the file
> to
> > /home/andy/.gnucash/books and overwrite the existing
> file profile, still no
> > change!
> > 
> > So nuke /home/andy/.gnucash, reboot, and try again. No
> joy!!
> > 
> > But if I open any of the data files as root, all is
> fine.
> > 
> > So obviously there is some hidden configuration file
> somewhere denying
> > "andy" access to older transactions.
> > 
> > But where? I even found /home/andy/.gconf/gnucash and
> replaced *that* with
> > the backup from last October, no joy.
> > 
> > I've searched the menus, rightclicked the files,
> nothing shows how to fix
> > this?
> > 
> > I'm sure I'll feel reeely dumb when someone tells me
> how to fix it, but I
> > will also be VERY grateful..
> > 
> > Best regards, Andy
> > 
> I haven't used the Close books feature, so I don't know
> what it does exactly.
> 
> But it sounds as if there are some filters enabled on your
> accounts. You can 
> open an account register, select "View->Filter by..."
> and see if this is set 
> to hide certain transactions.
> 
> Geert
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