In Excel 2016 on Windows I can overwrite all of these ... this is where I find them:
For thousands and decimal separator: File --> Options --> Advanced --> Editing Options. Look for "Use System separators". Uncheck and specify your preferred character, respectively. Blank for either is allowed. For list separator, which is what gets used when exporting CSV format: Control Panel --> Region --> Additional Settings. Change the "List separator" to your preferred character. Note that the list separator change is effective globally, thus for all application on the desktop, not just Excel so you may want to revert back after export to CSV is done. As mentioned before, you can always re-format the type of cell for each and every one of them to clean up in bulk within Excel to get you to the format desired. Those "??" coming over for special characters is likely due to character encoding mismatch. I am not too familiar with in depth of GNC but if it saves in UTF-8 than it should not be a rendering engine problem to display it correctly (may be devs can chime in and confirm that). That is normally solved by setting US-International keyboard setting that should perform conversion properly but based on your desktop setting you may have to tweak around for GNC, the Desktop and Excel to understand the same "language" to get it right. -----Original Message----- From: rsbrux <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, January 12, 2026 5:26 AM To: Kalpesh Patel <[email protected]>; 'David T.' <[email protected]>; 'rsbrux via gnucash-user' <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [GNC] report of investment income and capital gains (realized and unrealized) for the previous year Many thanks for all the suggestions! Unfortunately, Excel no longer offers a choice of delimiters when exporting or saving as CSV. Since the HTML files contain commas as thousands separators, I would first have to scrub all the commas for this to work, which isn't easy, because HTML notation makes liberal use of commas. LibreOffice Calc does offer a choice of delimiters, but the presence of the thousands separators still interferes with recognizing numbers. The problem with accented characters can be blamed on GnuCash. Even when the reports are displayed within GnuCash, accented characters like "é" and "ü", which display correctly in the GnuCash UI, are displayed as "??" in the report. With all of the manual work this would seem to call for, I wonder if I might still be better off writing a custom report. If so should I use the existing Advanced Portfolio source as a starting point, or would there be an easier way? Any further suggestions or tips about creating and deploying custom reports would be welcome! On Sun, 2026-01-11 at 12:19 -0500, Kalpesh Patel wrote: > If needing CSV format, you can export html format, open html in Excel > and then save as CSV format ... no? You can change the bulk column > format in Excel before saving as CSV. > > I normally highlight it in the displayed report, paste it in Excel, > and save as CSV. > > -----Original Message----- > From: rsbrux <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2026 11:40 AM > To: David T. <[email protected]>; rsbrux via gnucash-user > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [GNC] report of investment income and capital gains > (realized and unrealized) for the previous year > > Thanks, this would solve the problem for tax reporting, but I am most > interested in unrealized gains. > One workaround would be to import the Advanced Portfolio reports from > the ends of two successive years into spreadsheets and calculate the > differences in a third sheet. > Unfortunately, neither Excel nor LibreOffice Calc can properly > recognize the amounts in the HTML files. Any amounts preceded by > currency symbols (I have several different currencies in GnuCash) or > containing thousands separators are treated as text instead of > numbers. > A further minor annoyance is the failure to correctly interpret > accented characters (Umlauts). > I used to be able to export reports as CSV but no longer find a way > to do this in GC 5.14. > I only find ways to export HTML or PDF. Am I missing something > obvious? > Any workaround suggestions? > > On Sat, 2026-01-10 at 23:41 +0530, David T. wrote: > > I never open the Advanced Portfolio report. > > > > For tax purposes, I set up my accounts to have individual income > > accounts for each brokerage (dividends, LT capital gains, and ST > > capital gains, typically) and then assigned each of these to the > > appropriate tax line in tax options. Then, the TXF report (changed > > to hide zero balance accounts and transaction detail) summarizes > > everything nicely. > > > > Income > > - Dividends > > - - Broker A [assigned to Taxable dividend income] > > - - Broker B [assigned to Taxable dividend income] > > - Realized Gains > > - - Broker A > > - - - LT Capital Gains [assigned to Taxable LT gains] > > - - - ST Capital Gains [assigned to Taxable ST gains] > > - - Broker B > > - - - LT Capital Gains [assigned to Taxable LT gains] > > - - - ST Capital Gains [assigned to Taxable ST gains] > > > > David T. > > > > > > > > On January 10, 2026 11:05:04 PM GMT+05:30, rsbrux via gnucash-user > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > The Advanced Portfolio is close to what I want, but gives me the > > > numbers over the entire time I have owned the securities. > > > Is there some way I can modify the report to show the > > > *difference* > > > between the end of year results for two consecutive years? > > > If this requires learning scheme, I would appreciate being > > > referred to a good tutorial (preferably a document, not a video). > > > I found some useful info here: > > > https://gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-manual/report-create.html > > > but am surprised that no one else has addressed this, as I imagine > > > it would be needed for tax reporting. > > > gnucash-user mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > > > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > > > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. 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