Flipping account types by hacking the XML

[Greg Grotsky]

Hi guys,
 I'm new to gnucash and this is my first post. I am not an accountant but
I'm learning all about double entry and whatnot. It's really cool that
GnuCash is open source. I'm very excited about it.

 I have kept a record of my stuff in an Excel file and I've converted that
stuff to QIF and imported it. Awesome! But then I realized that the account
types were not what I expected. I saved off a bunch of my credit cards and
they were assigned as "bank" type. Even though I made a Credit Card
placeholder account and put all of them in there they're all still of
"Bank" type.

 I've found that I can save the file as XML and open it with a text editor
and find the <act:type> tag which, I believe, defines it. I'm wondering if
there are any negative ramifications if I hack those values to be what I
want them to be because it seems I'm unable to convert the types of
accounts from within the GnuCash program.

Thanks,
-Greg