Rant: Banks that only let you see the last few transactions online

[Mark]

It's not a wriggle. I've already covered the 'easy to remember' part. You have not supported your assertion so maybe you shouldn't bother.

ROTFL. This is usenet, not a court of law.

[John Williamson]

As it's free, both as in beer and as in speech, it's good value, if a bit US centric in its accounting codes.

It is, but then again, the dollar and the pound are both decimal currencies, and any tax information is now going to be wrong no matter what currency you're working in. I think there's a way to open UK accounts using it, I've not tried it, though, as GNUCash is more than enough for my simple needs.

[Dave Liquorice]

You mean by people responding to phishing emails... No amount of web security is going to help solve that one.

[Dave Liquorice]

I think there is a central registry of old banks and who (should) now have the details of the old accounts but see another post that indicated the government is about to (or has already) grabbed that money. I have some vague memories of that but not having any dormant accounts I didn't pay that much attention, was quite a while ago I heard.

[PeterC]

My only complaint re. Santander is that the .xls is in date-descending order and no way can I get it to go the other way across all columns. The Total doesn't follow the other columns - in fact it doesn't go in any logical order. I've tried all methods in both Excell and Calc. Begining to get used to it now, but haven't found a way of using the paper record in this way.

[Phil Addison]

There was a moneybox item about this a while back - search bbc radio 4.

[Phil Addison]

[Phil Addison]

Try TableTools2 firefox extension from

It is very good at extracting data from websites. Some sites defeat it but it works on a some bank sites I've tried.

Phil

[Davey]

To re-sort: In the first column to the right, create an ascending list,

1,2,3 etc, from top to bottom. Use 'Fill' to fill to the bottom of your table. Select the whole table, then 'Sort' using your new column, descending, as the rule. Your table is now upside down to what it was. I can't help with the Total problem, though, as I can't see it.

[stuart noble]

ISTR the A&L downloaded files were a bit strange, and any modern version of Excel whinged about converting them. Can't believe it's difficult to sort the data though. I've always found it easier to copy and paste into my own spreadsheet

[Bob Eager]

But you can still get it back, even if most won't bother.

[stuart noble]

Easier to just sort by date, but it sounds like theirs might be in a text format. This should convert it. ISTR the times one calculation forces Excel to treat it as a number?

=IF(A2"",SUBSTITUTE(A2,".","/")*1,"")

[chris French]

Nope (and the headline on the article is misleading), you will/be/are able to still claim the money back.

[chris French]

In message , JTM writes

Hmm, I think it might be.

Doesn't apply to the Smile readers, as we have a joint acct, and so use either of our Debit cards

[Bob Eager]

Doesn't apply to the NatWest ones. SWTNFI sometimes borrows my reader, as she occasionally loses hers.

[Andy Burns]

Certainly doesn't apply to the Barclays PINsentry, they use the same model in-branch to identify you for large value transactions.

[PeterC]

is very good

Thanks for that - now installed. I've always used Opera and keep Pale Moon for the awkward sites but next time I log on I'll see what the add-on can do.

[PeterC]

Thanks for the suggestions - I'll try them v. soon (nearly the end of the month). The Date column sorts OK, as do all of the others with the exception of Total; not only isn't it in the correct order for the new Date order but it's not in anything logical at all. If only I could predict the transactions I could keep the paper record to match the xls file!

[Huge]

Well, kinda. If the owner of the account turns up, they can get the money back. Otherwise the Government steals it.

[stuart noble]

I just downloaded a Santander file in the xls format, and see that things have improved since I last looked. Their date format is fine and sorting all columns (B:H) by date was no problem. Not sure what the "total" column is that you refer to.