GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 397135
Hidden Accounts Show in ComboBox
Last modified: 2018-06-29 21:22:59 UTC
Hidden accounts should not display in the destination account combobox of a transaction, unless Show Hidden Accounts is selected. I will note that it is possible to achieve this result by setting the account to a Placeholder account, but this seems a wrong approach philosophically. Other information:
*** Bug 363337 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I can confirm this suboptimal behaviour in gnucash 2.2.9. Steps to reproduce: 1. Create a transaction with description "test" to account Aufwendungen:Test 2. Change status of Account Aufwendungen:Test to hidden 3. Create a 2nd transaction with description "test" followed by <tab> GnuCash uses destination account Aufwendungen:Test which is actually hidden.
*** Bug 653331 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Workaround: Mark the account also as placeholder. With this Write-Protection the account will not appear in the dropdown list. BTW: "placeholder" is a misleading terminus. The write protection can also be used for closed accounts. Question: Does anybody know a case, where it would be useful, to have an account hidden from the chart of accounts, but not from the dropdown list? If yes, we should keep the current behavior and rework the documentation. If no, we should fix this issue.
It would be good to improve on the term "placeholder." Read-only should do it. Here are my comments to gnucash-user regarding the actual bug: Given that the documentation (for 2.2 anyway) says, "The check box Hidden marks this account (and any sub-accounts) to be hidden in the account tree and not appear in the pop-up account list in the register," I'd call showing the hidden accounts in the popup a bug, unless the documentation has been updated in 2.4. Regardless of the documentation, I'd call it a bug to show a hidden account in the popup :-). Checking the Placeholder option, particularly when the account has transactions, to fully hide an account doesn't seem right.
Section 5.4.1 of the version 2.6 documentation still says "The check box Hidden marks this account (and any sub-accounts) to be hidden in the account tree and not appear in the pop-up account list in the register." The functionality however is still inconsistent with the documentation. Steps to reproduce: 1. Mark an account in the tree as "Hidden". 2. Start a transaction in the register for an account. 3. Under the "Transfer" column, search through the pop-up list. Expected result (according to documentation): Account marked as "Hidden" and any sub-accounts are not in the pop-up list. Actual result: The account marked as "Hidden" and its sub-accounts, if any, are listed.
I have searched in the code to get this fixed and found that originally the code did adhere to the Hidden flag. However that was the source of a way more serious bug 340885. That bug had other possible solutions but these require a lot more work. For developers: I had to search a bit before I found where in the code this happens, so for reference I'll add the location here: src/register/ledger-core/split-register-load.c:skip_cb()
I can confirm that the Placeholder trick does NOT work in 2.6.1 Steps to reproduce: - Set several 'Liabilities' accounts and flag them as Hidden and Placeholder. - View -> Filter By... -> Other -> unmark "Show hidden accounts". - go to Business -> Employee -> Process Payment Voilà! The "Post to" drop down list still shows hidden/placeholder accounts. Unable to figure out any workaround for this.
With regard to Comment 8: I suspect this is a different issue. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the Process Payment Post To drop down only shows accounts of type A/Payable, so it is already filtering the account list. I confirm that it does not hide A/Payable accounts that are Hidden/Placeholder, but I would guess that the Post To drop down has its own code to generate the list, and thus would recommend a separate bug to fix that particular problem. JuliaS: It would seem to me that if you have a dormant A/P account in your account structure and wish to hide it from this display, you could change the type to "Liability" and then hide and placeholder it. This should prevent it from displaying in the Post To drop down list and hide it elsewhere as well.
Hey, Guys! I hate to interrupt this fascinatingly leisured academic discussion, but has anyone in here noticed that this is 2016? And that the bug in question was first reported in October 2006 - that's over NINE YEARS AGO for the hard of counting - and then again in 2007 and again in 2011, AND S T I L L YOU'RE JUST BLATHERING ABOUT IT? It's really very simple: either it's a bug (in which case it probably needs fixing by now), or it's not (in which case it can be ignored and you can stop wasting your valuable time on it). How does anything ever get done around here? C'MON NOW - GET REAL!
Hey, Colin! As the original reporter of the issue, yes, I am aware of the vintage aspect of this bug. Since I do not write code, all I can do is ensure that my concerns are clearly explained to the developers, and that other concerns are addressed. As for this bug, it is an ongoing issue for users, who periodically encounter difficulty understanding what GnuCash is doing in its handling of account display, and how to make use of the settings. Given the tenacious nature of the underlying behavior, I will attempt to make emendations to the documentation so that at least the current behavior is accurately described there. That, I suspect is the path forward on this bug. That's about as real as I can make it.
The Help document has been updated in two places (5.4.1 and 6.3.1) to explain this behavior.
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