[GNC] new computer - program & data transfer

Michael or Penny Novack stepbystepfarm at comcast.net
Wed Feb 12 10:54:55 EST 2020


On 2/12/2020 1:00 AM, Carl Hofinga wrote:
> I have purchased a new computer(Windows 10 home) and need to transfer the GNUCASH program and data file from the old computer to the new computer. My computer technician could not make the program transfer to the new computer.........
>
> Do I need to download the GnuCash program on to the new computer via the internet?  Then, I assume I would need to find the data file on the old computer and some how transfer it to the new computer.  I would need help identifying what I should be looking for in the old computer such as a brief description.

I will explain what you need to do for gnucash BUT this is just a small 
subset of things you need to do when migrating to a new computer. How 
hard easy some of those things are depends on:

1) Using the same operating system

2) Using the same log in name (user name)

3) Knowing where your data is on the old computer

A) Programs (applications that you use) --- You do not MOVE these 
between computers, you download and install them afresh. You are asking 
about gnucash, but presumably you might also be using a web browser, a 
mail client, a PDF reader, etc. << as opposed to ones that might be 
available by default --- thus if your computers were running Windows, 
would likely be coming with the MS versions available by default. 
UNDERSTAND -- this step of installing software on your new computer 
might not be obvious to you because you have only ever used what was 
available by default. Not JUST with Microsoft. Would be true also for a 
Mac OS or Linux distribution. Obvious to ME because although I am 
running under Windows 10 I use Firefox for browser, Thunderbird for 
mail, Adobe for PDF, LibreOffice for document editor/spreadsheet/etc. 
And of course needed to download/install printer drivers for my specific 
printers.

B) Data --- You have gnucash data, asked about that. But do you not also 
have scads of OTHER data? If the same OS, same user name, and assuming 
you put your data in your user directory (file folder) you can just copy 
THAT to the new machine and ALL your data will have been moved in one 
fell swoop.

    But you are just asking about gnucash so I will answer that not 
making the assumption of same OS and user name. First, you need to find 
your user data on the old machine, the file that is your gnucash books. 
What did you name it and where did you put it? If you don't know that 
(never did an initial "save as" to give it the name of your choice and 
location of your choice you will have to find it.  Search for files 
ending with the extension .gnucash. On the new machine, you would create 
a directory (file folder) for gnucash data and copy this file into that. 
When you first pen gnucash on the new machine, it won't know where to 
look for it, but file=> open will let you specify the file that you want 
gnucash to open (and then form then on it will be in the "most recently 
opened" list and if you only have one set of books under gnucash, chosen 
as "last opened".

Michael D Novack



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