Corrupted transaction export file - is this a bug, or do I do something wrong

[Geert Janssens]

Op dinsdag 20 december 2016 07:04:36 CET schreef habesz85:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I was trying to export my transactions for some reports with the transaxtion
> export function;
> <http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/n4688342/2016-12-20_16_03_26-pand
> y%26koaly2016.png>
> 
> What I noticed after opening the .csv file in excel, that some lines were
> incorrectly broken to a separate line, causing the whole file to be
> unusable:
> <http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/n4688342/2016-12-20_16_08_55-Book
> 1_-_Excel.png>
> 
> I have opened the .csv file in notepad++ and made the non-printing
> characters visible, where I spotted, that some lines have a line break added
> before the line actually ends;
> <http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/n4688342/2016-12-20_16_15_53-C__U
> sers_habesz85_Desktop_export.png>
> 
> Dose anyone knows wether this is a bug or not - and how to avoid it (so I
> can properly use the export file).
> 
> Thanks,
> Tamás

Hi,

These newlines most likely come from your gnucash data itself. Are these 
imported transactions or are the descriptions copied/pasted from somewhere 
outside of gnucash ?

It's a known problem gnucash is not always properly sanitizing external data. 
It will happily insert newlines in a transaction description if you paste some 
text with a newline or when you import transactions in which the description 
does have newlines.

You can try and remove this newline in gnucash using the delete key on the 
transaction descriptions for the ones that are causing trouble.

However let me also add for completeness I believe Excel is misinterpreting 
the csv file or you need to tweak your import settings in that application. 
The transaction description is quoted and the newline is inside the quotes, so 
in principle Excel should treat the newline as part of the description and not 
as the start of a new line.

Libreoffice is doing this correctly. Perhaps you need to tell Excel the import 
data is quoted or something similar ? I can't tell the exact options to use as 
I don't have MsOffice software on my system.

Regards,

Geert