Mass Deletion of transactions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Nate & Joan Sowers wrote:

> Hello gnucash users:
>
> My wife and I have been users of your software for many years.  We are 
> currently trying to figure out how to mass remove old transactions 
> from the accounts.  i.e. Would like to archive all transactions older 
> than a specified date and remove them from all of the current 
> accounts.  Our account sizes have gotten so large that gnucash has 
> gotten sluggish and takes too long to open and save.
>
> Do anyone know how this can be accomplished?


The problem is that old transactions affect the balances of standing 
accounts (permanent accounts)

But as to method -- QUESTION (big question)    How many standing 
accounts do you have? (type Asset, Liability, or Equity)    If that is a 
reasonably small number, then you can do this MANUALLY. 

a) You run a "close the books" to zero out all temporary accounts of 
type Income and Expense to Equity.
b) You export and then import the chart of accounts. Will be all zeros.
c) You run a Balance Sheet report as of the last day of the old books.
d) You enter an opening transaction (description "open new books") using 
the balances of all standing accounts.

Obviously this would be tedious if you have a large number of them.

A tool that would do this would be handy. Note that there is more to 
this tool; for example, would need to check that the books had first 
been "closed" (the balances of all NON standing accounts are zero). 
Could conceivably be done as an extension to "close the books" (an 
option "create new set of books")

Michael