[John Ralls]

On Jan 13, 2014, at 10:18 AM, Tommy Trussell <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 12:51 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> 
> On Jan 12, 2014, at 9:13 AM, porus pavri <pdpavri at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My question is: I want to compare the transactions posted in these two
> > control accounts, so I need to view these two "control" accounts (which are
> > lying in two separate files or account books) in the form of two windows
> > which I can view using Alt-tab, just like we toggle between two files in
> > Windows.  Can I do that here, if so how ?
> 
> Just open two instances of GnuCash and open one of the files in each. You’ll
> want to select “New File” when you open the second instance and it whines
> about the lock file.
> 
> 
> Unless I have misunderstood the situation I believe GnuCash will only complain about the lock file if you open two instances of the SAME data file. I open two, three and more (I have six active) GnuCash data files at the same time, one for each entity I manage. In the rare instance I need to compare two of them it requires only that I have a large enough monitor to keep them side-by-side.

Right, but when you start GnuCash it tries to open the last-opened file unless you’ve turned that off in Preferences. Since that file is already open in the first instance, you hit the lock.

> 
> The easiest way I have found is to create a GnuCash [entity_name] shortcut to each file. This varies by operating system. For example, in Ubuntu with the Unity window manager, you might create an edited .desktop ("dot desktop") file with all the instances in it, open it, and "lock" it to the launcher so you can right-click launch separate instances, one for each file. 

Which also gets around the last-used file is locked problem.

Regards,
John Ralls