[GNC] Stuck between versions

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 29, 2018, at 7:02 AM, 1marc1 <1marc1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> I am a long time user of gnucash and a first time poster on this forum. I
> find myself stuck between versions. On my desktop (Ubuntu 16.04) I am
> running gnucash 2.6.17. On my phone I am running the mobile version. I keep
> the mobile version up to date with whatever the latest version is.
> 
> I have been recording transactions on my mobile phone since about December
> 2017 and thought it would be a good idea to now import these into my
> desktop. Prior to December 2017, I had run some tests and everything worked
> fine: I could export a QIF file on the phone and import that into an
> existing gnucash file on my desktop. The transactions that I created via the
> phone app would simply be added to the transactions that existed on the
> desktop version.
> 
> When I now come to import the QIF file, I get a message saying "An error
> occurred while loading the QIF file", followed by the message "A bug was
> detected while parsing the QIF file". I have tried to export my transactions
> using CSV format, but the import does not work either. After Googling around
> a bit, I learned that the import function (for CSV) does not work (properly)
> in version 2.6 and below.
> 
> I found that the QIF files I had created during my tests prior to December
> 2017 are in plain text format, while the QIF file I created today seems to
> be binary. As such, I thought to upgrade my desktop version to the latest
> stable (3.2).
> 
> It seems to be quite a process to get that upgraded, but I followed the
> instructions outlined here https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/BuildUbuntu16.04 to
> the letter.
> 
> Unfortunately, when I reach the end, I run the command:
> 
> and that crashes with an error. See: https://pastebin.com/LPe9i6Em
> The content of the cmake output file is here: https://pastebin.com/1s4jEUzG
> 
> Where do I go from here? How can I get my transactions for the last 8 months
> added to the existing transactions on my gnucash desktop version?

QIFs are plain-text, and the importer hasn’t changed much (a few bugs fixed) between 2.6 and 3.2, so the problem would seem to be with the Android export. The first thing to check is if the files are compressed and if so, uncompress them. You can use the file command in Ubuntu for the first part:
  file foo.qif
If it says that it’s a gzip-compressed file, then 
  mv foo.qif foo.qif.gz
  gunzip foo.qif.gz

Other compression schemes will be similar, rtfm for whatever scheme it is.
If it’s not a compressed file you’ll have to go ask at the Gnucash-for-Android forum for instructions.

Regards,
John Ralls