[GNC] how to import a csv of transactions?

Tue Jul 13 01:34:50 EDT 2021

Thanks for the replies. To clarify, I have 2 separate gnucash files, one
for my everyday expenses and another for investments. In retrospect I
regret this decision and wanted to merge them together.

Steps I followed:

1) Go to the everyday accounts file and rename the top-level accounts by
appending "Household" to them to make sure there are no clashes. So my top
level accounts are "Household Equity", "Household Income", etc. I'll split
these out again later but I just want to make sure I can do the merge
without issues.
2) From the everyday gnucash file, go to file -> export -> Export Account
Tree to CSV. I imported this tree in the investments file. I didn't list
more details here as this all worked fine and the new account tree appears
in the investments file.
3) Go back to the everyday accounts, select file -> export -> Export
Transactions to CSV. Clicked through all options, just selecting defaults,
"Select all" accounts.
4) Go to my investments accounts file, select file -> Import -> Import
Transactions from CSV. Select the exported file. In the "Import Preview"
section of the wizard I now see all columns selected as "None". I assume
this means I need to load the correct profile, so I select the "Load and
Save Settings" dropdown (which says "No Settings" by default) and select
"Gnucash export format". When I do this Gnucash immediately hangs for about
5 seconds, then a popup appears with the title "Fatal error in GC" and text
"Too many root sets". The only options is "OK". When I click it, gnucash
force-closes.

Things I tried:
- exporting with quotes in case there are special characters in my
transaction descriptions. This doesn't seem to have any effect.
- I then searched for the "semicolon" character in my transaction
descriptions and confirmed that this character wasn't used anywhere, so I
exported my CSV with that as the separator. The result was... Weird. It
didn't fail this time when I selected "Fatal error in GC", but instead it
defaulted back to "comma" separation even though I'd selected semicolons.
When I then manually switched it back to semicolons, it would retain column
headings for the first 2 or 3 columns, but then revert back to "None" for
the rest. I started manually selecting the columns, but when I got to
"Price" it just crashed again with "Too many root sets".
- Reducing the export to 100 elements by manually truncating the csv file
"kind of" worked in that it didn't crash when I selected "Gnucash export
format" but then as soon as I confirm the dialog it takes me to a screen
where I have to manually map each account. This would be fine if I only had
to do it once, but with around 1000 rows I'd have to manually map 30-40
accounts around 10 times, which sounds tedious and error prone.

Arman

On Mon, 12 Jul 2021 at 23:50, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Arman,
>
> While CSV transaction imports are definitely supported in GnuCash, there
> have been some bugs reported with the 'new' CSV importer.  There used to be
> a fatal bug with the 'old' CSV importer that caused GnuCash to crash if the
> incorrect date format was selected, and it may still be possible to see
> that crash if you choose the wrong date format.  That is the reason that
> there is a new process to save import settings including the base account
> selection.  It is critical to do that import setup and save very carefully.
>
> Additionally, when getting familiar with the import process it is very
> possible to get results that you do not like so you can expect to fine tune
> settings until you like the results.  With some financial institutions you
> may even want to preprocess the CSV file before importing it.  Thus, start
> with a disposable copy of your data file and work with small import files.
> This especially includes the process of training the import matcher in the
> final step of the import.  At that stage, when you can describe in detail
> what you want to do, users here will step up to help.
>
> Good luck.
>
> On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 7:40 AM Geoff <cleanoutmyshed at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Arman
>>
>> Yes, this *definitely* works with v4.4 on Windows.  I haven't tried v4.6
>> yet, but I'd be surprised if it was broken.
>>
>> See the fifth post in this thread which includes screenshots and a
>> sample CSV file:
>>
>>
>> http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GNC-Tracking-cash-flows-with-balanced-transactions-td4721056.html
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Geoff
>> =====
>>
>> On 12/07/2021 10:01 pm, Arman Schwarz wrote:
>> > I've tried on both 4.4 and 4.6 but it seems that importing csv
>> transactions
>> > is broken. Before I continue down this path, is csv importing an
>> actually
>> > supported feature or are the issues with it known? Normally I'd put more
>> > effort into repro steps but I think it's so broken the devs hopefully
>> > already know about it. Errors I encountered:
>> >
>> > - Anything more than 200 transactions results in a fatal exception when
>> > selecting "GnuCash export format"
>> > - Account name is ignored, meaning you have to manually link every
>> account.
>> >
>> > I'm on windows.
>> >
>> > Are there any working alternatives for getting transactions out of one
>> > gnucash file and into another?
>> >
>> > Sorry again for the lack of detail.
>> >
>> > Arman
>> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
> David Carlson
>