Easy way to destroy a lot of data without warning

[Wm]

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:29:26 
<CA+nXY9a5Kvehi1RcvxuoroEBYY9KDyAchg_0RAViDO2Jy-mxKQ at mail.gmail.com> 
Paul Salmon <paul.b.salmon at gmail.com>

>Discovered by a friend of mine by accident :)
>
>Suppose you have an expense account that records expenses in USD, but
>the originating currency is a different one for most operations (UAH
>in this case). So most of the splits have two currencies, and there is
>an implied exchange rate there.

Are you (or your friend) using Trading a/c's or not? <-- it makes a 
difference

What are you using for exchange rates, actual rates obtained or market 
rates? <-- it makes a difference

>Now go to the expense account properties and change its currency to
>UAH. GnuCash will happily do that, and discard the (implied) exchange
>rate information, converting every expense to UAH. Editing the account
>again and changing the currency to USD will then simply change the
>currency, using the exchange rate of 1 USD = 1 UAH.

OK, I think you're *not* using Trading a/c's

>The only practical way to undo this is to restore from backup. Which
>is understandable, but the fact that this is possible without warning
>is suboptimal.

The discussion is ongoing and occasionally erupts.  I think you (or your 
friend) should have chosen to use Trading a/c's.

Be prepared for someone from a closed currency country like the USA to 
argue otherwise :)

>What would be nice is if changing the currency on a non-empty account
>would warn (upon pressing OK, and only if the account has splits in
>it) that splits which have the new currency on the other end of the
>split will be changed, while those that don't won't.

Also gnc Version, please.

I think this is an old question asked in a recent way but could be 
wrong.

Answer freely.

-- 
Wm...