[GNC] Removing old transactions

[Stephen M. Butler]

Here in the US there is an incentive to remove records older than 7 
years (in many cases 5 years).  Some odd IRS regulation that they can go 
back further if the information is available.  So, if all the older 
records are "missing" ...


On 12/17/25 22:05, R Losey wrote:
> I, too, wonder why one would want to delete some years; I have 9 years of
> GnuCash data and my save file is 2.8M -- in these days of terabyte drives,
> that's pretty insignificant.
>
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2025 at 6:12 PM Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) <
> stan+gc at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>> On 2025-12-17 12:16, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
>>> That is doable, but for the amount of effort required, is there some
>>> overriding *need* to do so? (I have over a decade of transactions and
>>> GnuCash does not care)
>> Indeed, I wondered about that too. The file is compressed, so deleting
>> 40% of it is unlikely to save anywhere close to a megabyte. And GC is
>> peppy at opening and saving, so the shortened file is unlikely to open
>> or save noticeably faster.
>>
>> An argument against doing the deletions is the need to create manual
>> transactions for opening balances of assets, liabilities, and equities,
>> as you noted. (I'm assuming the questioner's income and expenses have
>> zero balances at the beginning of a year.)
>>
>> Stan Brown
>> Tehachapi, CA, USA
>> https://BrownMath.com
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>