How to get stocks' total return?

[Fred Bone]

On 24 September 2012 at 23:43, risterian said:

> risterian <en9e-60hk at dea.spamcon.org> wrote:
> 
> >Manoj Kumar <mkmetw at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>Advance portfolio report will list the dividend received under "Income"
> >>column if the dividend transaction includes the stock account. Both
> >>debit and credit columns for the stock account split should be left
> >>empty.
> >>
> >>You can also check this thread (reply of Jannick Asmus)
> >>http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Advanced-Portfolio-and-dividend-in-
> >>cash-was-How-to-register-a-dividend-in-cash-td1433051.html.
> >>
> >>Regards,
> >>
> >
> >Thank you very much for the reply.
> >
> >The solution at the end of bug 581191 does seem to work, I tested
> >by changing one cash dividend to be shown that way.
> >
> >But it was tedious and error-prone to do just one, and I have 
> >hundreds.

Tedious, agreed. But it shouldn't be too error-prone if you're systematic 
about it:

For each Income:Dividends:<stockname> account:
- open the account
- View->Transaction Journal
- Go to first txn
- Click on its last actual split, on the Account name
- hit Down key to move to blank split
- Type enough to locate the related Asset:...:<stockname> account
- Tab & backtab (selects account & highlights the text)
- Ctrl-C to copy full account name to clipboard
- Then for every remaining txn:
-- Click on its last actual split, on Account name
-- hit Down key
-- Ctrl-V & Enter

Note that according to 
<http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2009-May/029779.html>
you are supposed to record the dividend from the share account window. 
However, AFAICT this is not necessary - doing as above achieves the 
required purpose, including entering the dummy value of 1 for "Price". At 
any rate, the Advanced Portfolio shows the correct values under "Income".