[GNC] how to import a csv of transactions?

Tue Jul 13 03:14:36 EDT 2021

I ended up doing the merge manually with a text editor, by just copying the
account structure over and then the individual transactions.

On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 at 15:34, Arman Schwarz <armanschwarz at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>