GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 689489
Be able to show file location
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:12:18 UTC
I'd like to be able to show the full & exact location of the file that's currently open. E.g. when Gnucash automatically opens the last opened file, I want to be able to verify that it's the correct one (if in my previous session I copied my main accountfile to a temp folder for testing - or to verify that it's the main file on disk vs the backup on a USB stick) You could e.g. add a read-only section to the File>Properties dialog with the full filename and folder (for the XML backend). In case of a DB backend the connection params can be shown. The titlebar of the main window shows the filename, but that is not sufficiently unique to identify the file.
Thank you for your report. I agree that it can be very useful to show the file location of the current file. I have chosen a slightly different approach though: I have added the full file location as tooltip to the files in the most recently used file list under the file menu. These tooltips are displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the gnucash window whenever you hover over a file name in the list with your mouse. As the currently open file is the most recent one in this list you can easily determine its location via this way. This improved status bar message will appear in the next major release (2.8).
It will help a lot. One slight disadvantage from that approach: if you have 2 copies with the same filename lying around (eg main one and one on USB stick) you still cannot make the difference. If you open a new file in a second instance, gnucash also updates the LRU list in the previous instance. So in that Gnucash window you now have to know that "your" file is the second in the list. But in most cases your approach is sufficient.
Thanks for the feedback. By reading it and re-reading your original request I tend to agree with you. A separate info tab in File->Properties is the better approach. The changes I made are useful for when you want to open a recent file but give no guarantees for the currently open file. So I have reopened this request to revisit it at some point.
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. The new URL for this bug is https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=689489. Please continue processing the bug there and please update any external references or bookmarks.