Reporting based on search criteria and exprting transactions to excel. It's simple!

[Mike Stillingfleet]

Dear All,

I have used GNUCash for a couple of years now.  in recent days I have come across a couple of features or tricks which have completely transformed the value of GNUCash to me. Yet neither of these features are in the help pages. Or if the are in the help pages I have consistently missed them in my efforts to find ways of reporting sensibly from GNUCASH. 

The first is that I have gone through all sorts of hoops to report on transactions based on a particular search criteria. 

I now find that this is simply achieved by doing a find from the edit menu. With the resultant search result tab open you can select the reports menu, account report and GNUCASH will create a report from those search results.

The second is that you can get your report into a spreadsheet very simply. Export the report as an html file. Open excel. Open the html file.

That's it. No converting pdf files to excel. No crazy export of transactions and importing CSV files etc etc.


I have to ask why is the combination of procedures not clearly spelt out in the help files. It has taken two years to discover this. I have posted several threads trying to achieve this. I think it has been possible all the time.

Now the information I have in GNUCash is suddenly an invaluable resource. I am no longer entering data in two or more places. I am no longer exporting transactions and manipulating them outside GNUCash.

A minor note to point out is that the values imported to excel initially appear as links through to the original transaction.  Copying the column and pasting as values takes seconds and then off you go. I think you could probably also set up a macro to do this step for you.

I am astonished that this is so simply achieved.  There are hundreds of threads on this forum with people obviously trying to achieve this. So obviously users are not getting appropriate instructions from the help files.

It it would be great and save everyone thousands of hours if it were to be included in the help clearly and obviously. 



-- 
  Mike Stillingfleet
  mikestillingfleet at fastmail.co.uk