OFX Note Propagation

[David Carlson]

Hi,

That thread appears to have languished, for whatever reason.

While I personally agree that the text added by the OFX/Generic importer
"OFX ext. info: |Trans type:Generic debit|Memo:" or similar should not be
propagated into duplicate transactions created either by overzealous
autofill or deliberate user duplication by button, I think that there is
actually more than one issue here.

One that is obvious to me is that the text itself applies only to the
imported transaction so, like the FITID, it should not be propagated to
copies of an imported transaction.

The other is whether it should appear in the first place when a transaction
is imported.  I think that the original developer that created that code
believed that he or she was tagging the transaction with information about
how the import module handled that particular transaction.  That might be
meaningful in the context of import module itself, and if it is, perhaps
there should be another hidden field next to FITID to contain that
information so that it does not clutter up the notes field or propagate to
transaction copies.

If it is not useful in that context, then I agree that there should either
be a way for the user to turn it off as suggested earlier in this thread or
the code should be removed altogether.

I would like to add that I recently discovered that free form text fields
like the notes field can contain embedded linefeeds (and tabs and perhaps
other non-printing ascii characters) if they get pasted in from the
clipboard.  This has the effect of hiding the text before the linefeed
without deleting it because the display code cannot expand the viewing
area.  Trying to use that fact would be a double edged sword because there
is probably a hard coded character count limit, or if the register2 display
becomes real, it may be handled differently there.  In the meantime it may
be easier to embed a linefeed than to delete the text manually every time
it appears.

Those are my thoughts.  I too want to see some action on these issues.

David C

On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 7:31 PM, rlaggren <rlaggren at mail.com> wrote:

> After searching archives I have found only this thread and it appears
> closely
> related to a problem I have. I hope it's OK to bump the thread and keep the
> topic consolidated.
>
> I download OFX files from several banks in preference to jumping through
> hoops and "signing up" for (and sometimes paying extra) for their live
> accounting software updates. After importing I find that most/all of the
> transactions have their "Note" field filled w/useless generic info starting
> w/"OFX"; it even includes the word "generic". From the above discussion and
> examination of the OFX files it appears the gnucash is doing this.
>
> How do I stop this auto-fill of imported OFX file transactions? For me the
> text contains zero useful info and causes useage problems.
>
> The fill bothers me in a couple of ways: 1) By filling the double line
> register listing w/clutter it makes it a joke as far as easily viewing
> _relavant_ Info; 2) There seems to be info from the bank that appears in
> some transactions (eg. source info for debit card and credit card trans)
> and
> while apparently not over written, this info is pushed to the end of the
> field and is not visible in the registry listing.
>
> Is there any config files to adjust? Is there any easily located block of
> code I could comment out, recompile and lose this Fill function of the
> Import system? Cleaning up trash from  4 or 5 files (various different
> accounts) of 10 - 100 items each month makes for serious "not-happy".
>
> Thanks for all thoughts.
>
>
> Rufus
>
>
>
> --
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