Time for action – using popular office software to query GnuCash data

We are going to do two things in this tutorial. First we are going to export the GnuCash data into a SQLite database. SQLite is a popular open source database that is being used behind the scenes in many well-known applications. It is possible that you already use SQLite, though you may not even be aware of that. As a prerequisite to the next step, get an ODBC driver for SQLite3 (http://www.ch-werner.de/sqliteodbc/) or a similar one and install it on your PC. This ODBC driver enables client applications such as OpenOffice.org Base to connect to databases such as SQLite3 as long as both support the ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) standard. After exporting the GnuCash data into SQLite3 database, we are going to use OpenOffice.org Base¹ to connect to that exported database and run a query to extract specific data of interest to us.

1. Select from the menu File | Save As…. The Save As… dialog will open. Click on the Data...