[GNC] noobie question about split transactions

[Stan Brown (using GC 4.14)]

On 2023-11-18 11:02, Tim via gnucash-user wrote:
> I tried migrating my 10+ years of data. Thank you for the excellent
> migration tools. I was able to enter a few simple transactions but then when
> I came to entering a credit card payment, which I enter as a split
> transaction with line items for every line item in the credit card bill,
> after I had spent many laborious minutes entering 50 or 60 line items I
> accidentally hit enter and all of my work was deleted.
> 
> That was incredibly disheartening.

Welcome to GnuCash, Tim!

If I understand correctly what you did, I have good news for you. I'll
bet dollars to donuts that your work is not lost, because I had similar
experiences when I was new to entering transactions.

When you pressed the Enter key on an unfinished transaction, you
committed the transaction. Since it was unbalanced, GC created a final
split in the Imbalance account to make debits equal credits. Since you
had not yet entered any split for the account whose register was open,
the transaction disappeared from that register. You should still be able
to find it by going to the Accounts panel and opening the Imbalance
account. (That's probably at the top of the Accounts panel, but if you
don't see it then click any account name once and begin typing Imbalance
to be taken to it.)

I had similar "oh no!" moments when I was bringing over seven years of
historical data from my dBase IV accounting system. I didn't understand
till later what had happened, but I found my transaction by clicking
anywhere into the Accounts panel, pressing Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac), and
entering a search that identified what I had just been doing.

GnuCash doesn't delete anything unless you press the Delete button. If
for some reason your transaction isn't in Imbalance, I'm confident that
you can find it by the Ctrl+F procedure.

After you've found your transaction, edit the Imbalance line to the
desired account and amount of your next split. (You can't delete the
Imbalance split while you're in the Imbalance register. The same is true
for every account.)

Stan Brown
Tehachapi, CA, USA
https://BrownMath.com