copying accounts and transactions from one book to another

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>
> I definitely understand the problem, but given a choice between having 
> NO means at all to do a merge and the ability to do one with a clear 
> warning that manual duplicate resolution may be required, I would opt 
> for the latter every time.

<< Read on. But note that I strongly disagree. It is MUCH easier to not 
have mistakes than to have to find and correct them later. >>


>
>> The sort of merge you are requesting NEEDS a component "check for
>> duplicates" << refuse to merge if any duplicate are found; but probably
>> produce an output listing the duplicate transaction >>
>
>
> Perhaps I'm missing something here. What constitutes a duplicate?

No, I was NOT talking about "duplicate transactions". You were 
suggesting this merge for DISJOINT books, books in which no ACCOUNTS 
were the same (same name, no difference in tree). Suppose in book one 
there was Assets:Current Assets:Bank Accounts:Checking Account and in 
book two there was Assets:Current Assets:Bank Accounts:1st Federal 
Checking. All well and good, books could be merged. But suppose in book 
two the name of the checking account was just Checking Account as in 
book one. Those are DIFFERENT checking accounts. Please don't tell me 
you consider it a trivial matter to sort out if the operation merged all 
the transactions from these two (different) accounts into one account!

I did NOT mean that the merge couldn't (ultimately) be done. Just that 
using the list of duplicates provided by this "check for duplicates" you 
would change account names (or insert placeholder parents to alter the 
tree) in one or both books till there were no duplicates and then do the 
merge. Understand? You were asking this merge functionality for the 
situation where these were disjoint books, no duplication. The 
"duplicate check" would be just to guarantee that condition was true, 
that they really were disjoint books.

Hey, my line of country (or was when I did this for a living). The 
client says what wants to happen and it is not the client's area of 
expertise to worry about all the "exception conditions" that need to be 
checked. That's what we analysts have to think about and suggest to the 
client that "better add that or you'll be sorry".

Michael