CSV Import

[Steve Isenberg]

I'm finally at a point where I can test the import again before the next month of transactions arrive. Following your suggestion below I was in fact missing the step to click on the header row to indicate the column. Dang it on me.

Now, however, there are new issues!

I'm trying to import into an income account with an offsetting entry into an asset account. Twice I told it the amount column is a deposit and both times it reduced the income * and * the asset account. 

Both times it did that and both times I ended up manually deleting the test import transactions.
I tried a third time and now it wants to transfer the entire balance to the asset account.
None of this makes any sense!

Also, on the match transactions screen it shows three columns: A, U+R, R.
What are they?
How do I know whether to check them or not?
CSV import should be straight-forward and easy. I've never seen an import that is so fickle, unreliable and lacking of information in how to use it. 

What exactly is the use-case for this?
What is the procedure to import into an income account with offsetting entry into an asset account?

Also, if you click the back button and then the forward button again. It errors and cannot proceed.
Thank youSteve




      From: Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be>
 To: Steve Isenberg <brrg58 at yahoo.com> 
Cc: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
 Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2017 4:28 AM
 Subject: Re: CSV Import
   
On zondag 2 april 2017 02:50:54 CEST Steve Isenberg wrote:
> No way, there is no way the CSV import works!
> 
> To start I removed the header row as it wasn't really needed.
> 
> The original date format was the typical US, m/d/yyyy. I changed it to
> d-m-yyyy, replacing the forward slash with a hyphen. It failed.
> 
> I changed the date to yyyy-m-d, and it failed.
> 
> This is the test data that I tried to import:
> 
>    2017-2-1,Pamela H,18
>    2017-2-1,John L,18
> 
> Preview Settings (screen)
> Start import on row 1 and stop on row 2
> Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8)
> Data type: separated
> Separators: comma
> Date Format: y-m-d
> Currency Format: locale
> Step over Account Page if Setup: checked
> 
> Click the Forward button
> 
> Account Selection (screen)
> 
> ERROR:
> There are problems with the import settings!
> The date format could be wrong or there are not enough columns set...
> 
> Every time, it fails at the same place and with the same message,
> every-single-time.
> 
> I am running Windows 7.
> 
> I don't want to do data entry as I have data from multiple sources that I
> want to import.
> 
> What columns are supposed to be in the CSV file?
> What are the formats of each column?
> I need a work around or a fix to move forward.

Hi Steve,

I just tried again on my Windows test system. I can succesfully import the 
data you suggest (gnucash 2.6.15).

As for what columns are supposed to be in the CSV file, there are 3 mandatory 
columns: a date column, a description column and then either one of Deposit, 
Withdrawal, Balance. The sequence in which they are in the CSV file can vary, 
so it's up to you to tell the importer which column is which in your data. You 
do this in the Preview page of the importer by clicking on the header fields 
of the data table (each of which is initially set to "none").

In your step by step description above you don't mention doing this. Perhaps 
that's the issue ?

Regards,

Geert