Importing bank statements in CSV format

[David Carlson]

Geert and Tim,

I was vague about how to use either of the two types of imports that I
named because I did not have files of either type ready to try.  As we all
know the documentation is still fragmentary at best.  That was a run-on
sentence that confused you, well below my usual standard.  I guess I have
been influenced by our new president with his highly intellectual standard
of locution.  :)

I was attempting to say that Geert is working on improvements to the
currently published CSV importer as evidenced in other topics on this
maillist.  Thank you Geert for your description as well as all the other
work that you have done on this fine program.

Tim, as you get more comfortable with the program you may or may not decide
that a different method works better for you with your circumstances.

That is a lot of compound sentences.  I need some sleep.  :)

David C

On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 4:07 PM, Tim Hume <tim at nomuka.com> wrote:

> Thanks people,
>
> Seems like editing the CSV is the way to go.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tim.
>
>
>
> On 8 May 2017 5:35:58 AM Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be>
> wrote:
>
> On zondag 7 mei 2017 16:11:44 CEST David Carlson wrote:
>>
>>> When a csv file is opened by a spreadsheet application, the transactions
>>> appear in a nice table format which makes it almost trivial to use a
>>> mouse
>>> to cut and paste either wanted information or unwanted information.  Then
>>> save to the same CSV format instead of the spreadsheet format.  If that
>>> is
>>> not helpful for your case...
>>>
>>> I may be wrong about this as I am just now learning how it works in
>>> GnuCash
>>> release 2.6.15...
>>> I think that the CSV importer that is available in most of the versions
>>> of
>>> GnuCash except the next one which will be much easier to use and has not
>>> been officially released yet allow you to select which lines to import
>>> while you are defining the format of the data file and assigning the
>>> columns to GnuCash columns.  Then, when you get to the last stage where
>>> you
>>> can edit the account assignments, you can also choose not to import each
>>> transaction similarly to how it is done in with the OFX import.  Or you
>>> can
>>> choose to assign unwanted transactions to a special account to be deleted
>>> later.
>>>
>>> David C
>>>
>>
>> I'm having some trouble reading the part where you talk about the current
>> importer and the new one in one single sentence. While the flow in the new
>> importer will be an improvement over the current one (at least I would
>> hope
>> so), both have essentially the same options to skip lines. I'll mention
>> them
>> here:
>> 1. There are fields you can enter the number of lines to skip at the
>> beginning
>> or end of file.
>> 2. There's a check box that allows you to skip all even lines. This
>> assumes
>> your csv file consists of interleaved lines with data and non-data (info)
>> in a
>> regular pattern.
>> 3. There's an option that will allow you to skip lines with parsing
>> errors. If
>> your info lines consistently have bogus data in for example the date
>> field,
>> this could be used as a crude filter technique.
>> 4. On the last page you can untick the "A" (which stands for "Add") field
>> for
>> each line you don't want to import.
>>
>> Other than that there will be situations where some preprocessing of the
>> csv
>> file will  be needed before an import can be done. CSV is a very generic
>> file
>> format so it's very difficult to cope with all possible variations.
>>
>> Hope that helps.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Geert
>>
>
>
>