New user with (probably) a stupid question...

[John Ralls]

On Aug 15, 2014, at 8:07 AM, Tracy <gnulist at vbot.org> wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> I am a new user of GnuCash (version 2.4.11 - running on Windows 7, 64-bit). I am a (former) Quicken user, and exported all my data from there and imported it into GnuCash.
> 
> The interface and some of the options took a bit of getting used to, but I'm starting to be able to get around and work with the data (including cleaning up some of the "laziness" from when I entered it all into Quicken). But I've run into a couple of questions/issues that I haven't been able to find an answer to.
> 
> 1) When using the transaction register, especially when editing a current transaction, is there a way to "cancel" the edit, and leave the original transaction unchanged? As an example, consider that I have opened the Expenses.Miscellaneous register (in preparation for cleaning some of those up) and find the following transaction:
> 
> 08/10/2014  <no num>  Circle K
>            <no num>  <no desc>   Expenses.Miscellaneous    40.00
>            <no num>  <no desc>   Liabilities.Current.MCard        40.00
> 
> Let's say that I want to change Expenses.Miscellaneous to Expenses.Auto.Fuel. But being fat-fingered, I accidentally start to type over the Liabilities.Current.MCard. Now that account has been replaced when I started typing Ex, and I don't remember what it is. Which is a problem.
> 
> How do I "abort" the edit of this transaction? (I know I can close the transaction register, and as long as I haven't pressed Enter or otherwise accepted the change, I'll be prompted to save or discard the change - but that seems a bit drastic.) In other apps, if I pressed the Escape key at that point, the changes I made would be undone, and I would be left with the original transaction... Is there a simple way to have that happen in GnuCash?

Have you tried the "Cancel" button in the toolbar? It's the one with the big red "X".

> 
> 2) Regarding "hot-key" setup. I found a page on the web that gave information about how to set up hot-keys for various actions. I have not yet tried to do this, but I was wondering if anyone could point me at a list of "gotcha's" (things to avoid, or things to be sure are absolutely correct) before I start playing. I don't want to mess something up badly enough that it can't be fixed....

I don't know what are the instructions that you found; the correct ones involve text entries into either a .gtkrc file or .gnucash/accelerator-map. In either case if you mess up you can just delete the former and restore a saved copy of the latter to return GnuCash to its original state.

> 
> 3) Regarding OFX direct-connect. While I have successfully downloaded OFX/QFX data from my bank, and gotten it into GnuCash by importing the OFX/QFX file, I would like to be able to set this up to do it automatically in GnuCash. I have looked at the Tools > Online Banking Setup, and walked through the wizards and such, but apparently I am missing something reasonably obvious (or perhaps non-obvious, as this appears to be a somewhat arcane area), as I am unable to retrieve a list of accounts from the bank.
> 
> I have verified that I am using the correct user name and password (the same ones I use to access online banking through my bank's web site). However, every time I try to retrieve the list of accounts, I get "Error parsing download" (that message is from memory, and may not be correctly worded - but it doesn't matter as I'm about to show you what is not being parsed correctly). When I turned on OFX logging and I looked at the retrieved information, I find the following (note, user and password information have been <redacted>):
> 
> Sending:
> -------------------------------------
> OFXHEADER:100
> 
> DATA:OFXSGML
> 
> VERSION:102
> 
> SECURITY:NONE
> 
> ENCODING:USASCII
> 
> CHARSET:1252
> 
> COMPRESSION:NONE
> 
> OLDFILEUID:NONE
> 
> NEWFILEUID:20140814223804.000
> 
> 
> 
> <OFX><SIGNONMSGSRQV1><SONRQ><DTCLIENT>20140814223804.000<USERID><redacted>
> 
> <USERPASS><redacted>
> 
> <LANGUAGE>ENG<FI><ORG>Huntington<FID>3701</FI><APPID>QWIN<APPVER>2300</SONRQ></SIGNONMSGSRQV1><SIGNUPMSGSRQV1><ACCTINFOTRNRQ><TRNUID>20140814223804.000<CLTCOOKIE>1<ACCTINFORQ><DTACCTUP>19691231</ACCTINFORQ></ACCTINFOTRNRQ></SIGNUPMSGSRQV1></OFX>
> 
> Received:
> -------------------------------------
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
> <!-- Copyright (C) 2000 Tivoli Systems, Inc. -->
> <!-- Copyright (C) 1999 IBM Corporation -->
> <!-- Copyright (C) 1998 Dascom, Inc. -->
> <!-- All Rights Reserved. -->
> <HTML>
> <HEAD>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY>
> <script language=javascript>
> var s="";
> switch(s) {
>  case "0x132120c8":
>      window.location = "/rol/Auth/login.aspx"+"?error="+s;
>      break;
>  default: window.location ="/rol/Auth/login.aspx";
>      break;
> }
> </script>
> </BODY>
> </HTML>
> 
> Now, the script shown in the received data would tend to make me think it's an authentication problem, but as I said, I checked the user name and password (multiple times, including making sure they are correctly capitalized, etc). So I am left with the thought that I have something incorrectly set up. But I am not able to find any information that would point me in the direction of what needs to be changed. I can provide any needed details on the setup - just let me know what's needed. Any pointers?
> 
> Any help or ideas appreciated.

It looks to me like your bank provides OFX Web Connect rather than OFX Direct Connect. GnuCash supports only OFX Direct Connect.

Regards,
John Ralls