[GNC] Difficulty in migrating Gnucash to second computer

[Nic Deane]

On 04/01/2020 22:36, Nic Deane wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> Thank you so much for a great, simple answer! I found that whereas 
> before (for whatever reason) all my gnucash files were just sitting 
> (all laid out) in my Documents directory they were now all grouped in 
> a Gnucash directory. When I opened that directory I found them all 
> there and went immediately to the <filename>.gnucash file. I then 
> copied this Gnucash directory over to my netbook. When I opened 
> .gnucash file with Gnucash in the netbook everything all came together 
> and, voila, everything is there - reports and all. This took me all of 
> five minutes!
>
> Thank you so much!
>
> How good it is to be able to ask questions of knowledgeable folk and 
> they come back to you so quickly. How amazing is the Linux and Gnucash 
> community!
>
> Wishing you God's richest blessing in 2020,
>
> Nic Deane
>
> On 04/01/2020 21:27, David Cousens wrote:
>> Nic
>>
>> The .gnucash directory only contains user meta data about your 
>> preferences
>> in using GnuCash and any stored reports etc. The section in the Books
>> subdirectory  is again only meta data and not the actual data file. The
>> actual data file will be somewhere else in your home directory where you
>> saved it when you first opend GnuCash on the first computer. If you 
>> created
>> a subdirectory for your gnucash datafile (recommended practice) that
>> subdirectory can have any name you give it but it will contain files 
>> of the
>> following formats:
>> <filename>.gnucash;
>> <filename.gnucash.<timestamp>.log;
>> <filename.gnucash.<timestamp>.gnucash;
>>
>> There should be only one <filename>.gnucash file but there may be 
>> several of
>> the
>> <filename.gnucash.<timestamp>.log;
>> <filename.gnucash.<timestamp>.gnucash;
>> files with different values of the timestamp. These are log files and 
>> backup
>> files respectively created each time the program is opened. The 
>> timestamps
>> have a "yyyymmddhhmmss" format. You may also see files with a .LNK 
>> and .LCK
>> extension which are used to prevent the file being opened by more 
>> than one
>> user or more than one instance of the program accidentally.
>> If you can open the data file in GnuCash the <filename>.gnucash 
>> should be
>> displayed in the title bar. You can then search your home directory for
>> <filename>.gnucash to locate where it is stored in Nemo.
>>
>> It is the contents of this directory that need to be copied to a new
>> machine. I use my accounts with several different users on two Linux 
>> Mint
>> computers and one Windows 10 box by storing them in a Dropbox accessible
>> from each account on each computer.
>>
>> If you use customized reports and you want to migrate them or make them
>> available on more than one machine you should also copy the hidden 
>> .gnucash
>> directory if you are using a GnuCash version earlier than I think 
>> 2.6.19. In
>> a few late 2.6 and 2.7 versions and in all 3.x versions the metadata is
>> stored under $HOME/.local/share/gnucash  as explained in the wiki
>> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations
>>
>> Another alternative to using dropbox is to use a file synchronization
>> program like Unison which is available for Linux, Windows and Macs to
>> synchronize your data and configs on several machines. This however can
>> cause confusion as to which computer has the most up to date files on it
>> which is why I use the Dropbox for the datafile and only sync my user
>> preferences with Unison.
>>
>> David Cousens
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----
>> David Cousens
>> -- 
>> Sent from: 
>> http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
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