GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 775177
start date / end date preference cannot be persisted, reports cannot be made
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:52:13 UTC
Setting the start date and end date in the edit -> preferences dialog does not persist, so trial balance, balance sheet reports have no data, since they seem to be trying to use these to select transactions. This may be related to following instructions in https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Closing_Books section on One file per year, and having opened two different year files in the same gnome session. Original gnucash file, set preference to 12/1/2013 and 12/31/2014. Did account export to set up new year file. Entered transactions for new year file in 12/1/2015 - 12/31/2015 time period. At various times have had both files opened either sequentially or simultaneously in the same session. Later tried to set preference to the new dates when using new year file only. It is never saved, reopening dialog or running reports still show old preference dates. Are these gnome settings being cached ???
Preferences are application-wide settings that are stored in the computer's preferences facility (GSettings on Linux, defaults on Macs, and the Registry on M$ Windows), not per-file. If you set fixed dates for the accounting period then that period will apply to all of the files. You also can't have two files open in the same session; you can launch two instances of GnuCash and open different files in each, but any changes in Preferences will apply to both instances. Bug 493789 requests moving the accounting period preference to file>properties and that seems to be what you're expecting, so marking this a duplicate. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 493789 ***
I was not clear enough I see. I am running each file in a separate instance ( invocation ) of gnu cash. But actually I only did that once or twice, usually only one of the files and one instance is running. I don't expect that the dates will only apply to one file. What was happening was, with only one instance open, changing the dates was not persisted after the dialog was closed. I closed gnu cash and changed the dates with gsettings. After that, oddly enough, I was able to also change them in gnu cash. Suspect this is really a gnome bug.
I suspect not, but see if you can replicate the behavior and carefully note how you did it. A couple of notes: "Persist" and "have an effect" are different. "Persist" means that you changed the date, closed the dialog, quit and restarted GnuCash, re-opened the dialog, and found that the date had reverted to its previous value. "Have an effect" means that you changed the end date and the (e.g.) Balance Sheet report wasn't for that date. That behavior would be expected if you changed the date but neglected to select the "Absolute Date" radio button next to it. Changing the date doesn't automatically select that radio button for you; perhaps it should.
Persist is what I meant. I have played around some more and found a way to reproduce. I found that if I typed the date it would persist, but if I used the date picker it would not . I tried a few things with the date picker, like making sure I changed focus to the other date in the dialog tab before closing, but nothing would get the date picker method to work. I am including below all the other stuff I did in case there is any value in it: Changed dates in dialog. Closed dialog. Re-opened dialog, dates were values prior to the change. Changed dates in dialog. Closed dialog. Closed gnu cash. Re-opened gnu cash and dialog. Dates were values prior to the change. In all cases absolute date radio button was selected. Closed gnu cash. Used gsettings to change values. Opened gnu cash. Opened dialog. Dates show new values. All the above was done on my "2015" file used when starting the gnucash instance. Next, I created a "2016" file. I exported the accounts to a different folder and gave it a new file name. I closed gnu cash. I started up gnu cash with the new file. First, before any transactions entered, I changed the dates. This time the dates remained at the changed values, observed by re-opening the preferences dialog. ( NOTE I may not have used the datepicker ). Entered a number of transactions. Now, just to test for this ticket, I tried to change the dates again. Re-opening the dialog after the change showed the old values not the new ones. Played around some more. Found out that typing instead of using date picker seemed to work.
I'm able to reproduce this on 2.6.1 on Debian Jessie but not on 2.6.14. I suggest that you upgrade.
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