edit file.gnucash

[Harold]

Sorry, you lost me. 


In a earlier post when I tried Gnucash in Window XP, it had problems with a date that was in the file that had 1969 in it. I don't remember the search string that turned it up. Someone on this list told me what to do and it worked. Anyway, I had always used Gnucash in Linux and didn't have a problem until I tried using the backup from Linux in XP. After I edited the file and overwrote the 1969 date to 1970 XP didn't have problems. The version that I was dealing with then was 2.2.9 and I don't know if 2.4.7 might have the same problem. I would only use XP to run Gnucash when I am on the road and using a laptop that only has XP on it. When at home I use a desktop and the laptop belongs to my wife so dual booting the laptop is not an option.


Harold


________________________________
From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>
To: Harold <hh6199 at yahoo.com>
Cc: Gnucash <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 11:35 AM
Subject: Re: edit file.gnucash

Harold wrote:

> I was wanting to edit the gnucash data file that I have in Mint Debian to make sure that it didn't have the year 1969 that causes a problem in Windows XP. 
Just FYI --- it wouldn't be 1969 that you would be looking for! (when getting an invalid date error for that funny date).

That's simply the start point for computer time (time = 0) when the date/time is stored as a single number from which date and time of day within date computed from time elapsed since this zero point.

Seeing that funny date appear means:
a) Your program is using this method for date/time
b) No valid data was entered in the field (still zero)

So your editing would be looking for zero in the field.

Michael D Novack, FLMI

NOTE: That method of storing date/time OK for some purposed like "when was transaction entered" (real time) since a date in 1969 before the program even existed. But it's not OK for things like "what is the date of this transaction" (if you were transcribing the books of an ongoing business from paper to machine readable you have no such assurance).