[GNC] Cannot change preferences

[Adrien Monteleone]

Ken,

Sorry, I saw this when you originally posted it (twice) but wasn’t able to reply at the time and I see you haven’t heard from anyone yet.

Although seemingly unhelpful, the error message is telling you how to fix the problem.

Apparently, after changing the separator to a backslash “\” (which is also a file path separator in Windows, not a safe choice!) you named about 50 accounts to include the old path separator “:” as part of the actual name. If you re-institute the “:” as path separator, GnuCash is going to freak out because it will appear you have a bunch of new accounts that don’t exist yet. (and likely attempt at some point to get you to create them as you tab/enter through transactions, if not just totally blow up or freeze as it seems to have done.)

The solution is to FIRST, change all of your accounts names to NOT use “:” in the name itself, perhaps substituting hyphen “-“ or something reasonably similar. (Commas are unsafe choices also due to CSV import/export issues with various software - you don’t want to deal with comma delimited files if fields contain commas themselves unless specially handled)

Once you’ve eliminated all instances of “:” in your account names, then the error/warning won’t appear and you can change the account separator back to it.

As long as you stick to a single OS, you can choose to use either \, or / accordingly for separators, but commas are usually bad news. (Windows uses backslashes for file paths and *nix uses backslashes) Pipes and periods even can be an issue, though more rarely so. (Pipes redirect output and periods are usually extension separators, but this only an issue in Windows) 

That really limits things a bit. But you can likely safely use hyphen “-“, underscore”_”, semi-colon “;”, tilde “~”, middle dot “•”, small middle dot “·”, double left arrow “«”, double right arrow “»”, equivalent “≈”, diamond “◊”, en-dash “–“, and em-dash “—“. (those last two are sometimes indistinguishable from each other or even from hyphen in some fonts)

On that note, while you’re replacing your copious use of “:” as part of account names, consider hyphens “-“ and underscores “_” as replacements. Some coding conventions use underscores to separate words—e.g., “camel_case” instead of "camelCase", and hyphens to indicated sub-levels or more specific information—e.g., “Rent-Apartment_A” and "Rent-Apartment_B".

I too experimented with other separators, but found the colon to be a well thought out default as it is easy to quickly step through the account hierarchy one letter and colon at a time. Other choices are farther away and harder to tap easily. (some of the above suggestions require 3rd & 4th level modifier keys) Also, muscle memory is a consideration.

Regards,
Adrien

> Ken Heard on Tue Jul 10 23:54:56 EDT 2018
> 
> I have been using GnuCash since 2009.  Twice every year I need to 
> transfer my account file from one desktop to another.  I never had any 
> trouble opening GnuCash after each such transfer until now.
> 
> Early on in my use of GnuCash I changed the accounts separator from the 
> colon (:) to the back slash (\).  Since that change I use the colon in 
> quite a few account names, currently numbering about fifty..
> 
> When I tried to open my account after the most recent transfer, a window 
> appeared saying the following.
> 
> 	The separator character ":" is used in one or more
> 	account names. [Actually about 50 accts.]
> 
> 	This will result in unexpected behavour.  Either change
>          the account names or choose another separator character.
> 
> I would like to do one or the other, but the GnuCash Preferences window 
> is locked.  I can open it on the monitor but cannot make changes to 
> *any* of the preferences.
> 
> The version of GnuCash which I want now to use GnuCash is 2.6.15, the 
> latest one available with Debian Stretch.  I am not sure what version 
> was the previous computer, except to say that it was likely the latest 
> version available with Debian Wheezy.
> 
> I would appreciate receiving information on how to fix this problem. I 
> did try to find the location of the file containing the selected 
> preferences but was unsuccessful.
> 
> Regards, Ken