On 29/09/12 22:43, Part Timer wrote:
On 27/09/2012 15:32, djc wrote:

And while we are on banking rants€” Nationwide don't think my account is
a main account because I don't pay in 750 quid every month, the fact
that I have an irregular self-employed income that amounts to
considerably more that that over the course of a year dosn't count
apparently.

Is that for the travel insurance offered instead of free foreign ATMs?
I'm in the same situation as you regarding the £750 thing. They sent a
letter saying I had to pop 750/1k (can't remember) in each month until
the end of 2012, which I will do with same day faster payments shuffles.
For foreign ATMs, I visited Metrobank when in London.


Yes, that's it. I don't actually care about the 'free' travel insurance:
a) because I'm sure the small print won't cover my trips if I could be
bother to look. (ie business, nor 90 days away); b) there is similar
insurance with my Santander account and they only want £500 pcm to keep
the account open; c) if I really wanted insurance I would take out a
policy that met my needs.

Moreover, the 'free' travel insurance was introduced when they started
charging commission on currency transactions (+ £1 ATM fee if cash
withdrawal). That cost me over £26 last year and will be a lot more this
year as I was away all summer. I've just compared the exchange rate (inc
charges) I got from Nationwide compared to the card transactions on my
Northern Rock current account. Nationwide works out at 2p in the £1 more
expensive.



--
djc

"Phil Addison" wrote in message
...


Still three orders of magnitude less than what the bank "stole" off of
me!

Sue 'em in the small claims court!

No I got the money back, just like you will with the new scheme.

I was just pointing out that the "government" scheme that the PP was
complaining about is exactly the same as what happened before, except that a
different party benefits from the proceeds of accounts whilst they are
dormant.

tim

On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 10:19:49 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

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!


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.

Sorry, Balance (been doing gas, water and electric spreadsheets and, of
course, use Total in those.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On 30/09/2012 10:23, PeterC wrote:
On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 10:19:49 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

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!


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.

Sorry, Balance (been doing gas, water and electric spreadsheets and, of
course, use Total in those.


In that case I'm stumped because it all works fine at this end. Are you
sure there's nothing lurking in column H, a formula of some kind maybe?
Try copying from the website and pasting into a new ss.

On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 12:50:54 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 30/09/2012 10:23, PeterC wrote:
On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 10:19:49 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

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!


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.

Sorry, Balance (been doing gas, water and electric spreadsheets and, of
course, use Total in those.


In that case I'm stumped because it all works fine at this end. Are you
sure there's nothing lurking in column H, a formula of some kind maybe?
Try copying from the website and pasting into a new ss.

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On 30/09/2012 15:02, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 12:50:54 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 30/09/2012 10:23, PeterC wrote:
On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 10:19:49 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

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!


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.

Sorry, Balance (been doing gas, water and electric spreadsheets and, of
course, use Total in those.


In that case I'm stumped because it all works fine at this end. Are you
sure there's nothing lurking in column H, a formula of some kind maybe?
Try copying from the website and pasting into a new ss.

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.



That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:03:32 +0100, stuart noble
wrote:

On 28/09/2012 12:05, Mark wrote:

You may have a good way of generating passwords that are difficult to
guess but the vast majority of people pick stupid passwords which are
easy to guess.


Just make sure your dog has a very unusual name

K0R34n_K3ba6


--

On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 21:59:33 +0100, The Other Mike wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:03:32 +0100, stuart noble
wrote:

On 28/09/2012 12:05, Mark wrote:

You may have a good way of generating passwords that are difficult to
guess but the vast majority of people pick stupid passwords which are
easy to guess.


Just make sure your dog has a very unusual name

K0R34n_K3ba6

I keep a special shovel for those.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:26:39 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.


That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

I might try there, then. I'm getting to prefer Calc as I find it easier to
use, but that might be because it's 9 years younger.
I'd love to know /why/ the sorting doesn't work, even if I can't fix it
curiosity and all that.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On 01/10/2012 08:06, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:26:39 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.


That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

I might try there, then. I'm getting to prefer Calc as I find it easier to
use, but that might be because it's 9 years younger.
I'd love to know /why/ the sorting doesn't work, even if I can't fix it
curiosity and all that.


Well exactly. It changes the order in H but not in tandem with the other
columns. Crazy :-)

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:54:53 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 01/10/2012 08:06, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:26:39 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.


That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

I might try there, then. I'm getting to prefer Calc as I find it easier to
use, but that might be because it's 9 years younger.
I'd love to know /why/ the sorting doesn't work, even if I can't fix it
curiosity and all that.


Well exactly. It changes the order in H but not in tandem with the other
columns. Crazy :-)

If a column won't sort correctly (read 'as expected') then surely it must be one of 2
things 1) The column or part of it is not selected to be sorted, or 2) the contents of the
cells are not what you think they are. For 1) make sure whole rows are selelcted not just
a rectangular block*. For 2) look for trailing or leading 'spaces', real "£" signs as
opposed to £'s displayed by the currency format, text instead of numeric cells, any
non-printing characters. Try manually re-typing in the values. Try pasting the data into
notepad then cut'n'paste into excel to get rid of any non-printing characters.

*In excel, once you start the sort you can't see what area was selelcted so its difficult
to know if you accidentally left some data out of the sort. I've been bitten by that a few
times.

--
Phil Addison

On 01/10/2012 11:47, Phil Addison wrote:
On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:54:53 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 01/10/2012 08:06, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:26:39 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.


That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

I might try there, then. I'm getting to prefer Calc as I find it easier to
use, but that might be because it's 9 years younger.
I'd love to know /why/ the sorting doesn't work, even if I can't fix it
curiosity and all that.


Well exactly. It changes the order in H but not in tandem with the other
columns. Crazy :-)

If a column won't sort correctly (read 'as expected') then surely it must be one of 2
things 1) The column or part of it is not selected to be sorted, or 2) the contents of the
cells are not what you think they are. For 1) make sure whole rows are selelcted not just
a rectangular block*. For 2) look for trailing or leading 'spaces', real "£" signs as
opposed to £'s displayed by the currency format, text instead of numeric cells, any
non-printing characters. Try manually re-typing in the values. Try pasting the data into
notepad then cut'n'paste into excel to get rid of any non-printing characters.

*In excel, once you start the sort you can't see what area was selelcted so its difficult
to know if you accidentally left some data out of the sort. I've been bitten by that a few
times.

--
Phil Addison


I've downloaded a Santander xls and everything works as it should, so I
guess the data is ok, and the problem must be at the OP's end

On Friday, 28 September 2012 10:40:35 UTC+1, Davey wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 01:29:19 +0100

Frank Erskine wrote:



On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:47:43 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"

wrote:



On 27 Sep 2012 21:28:15 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:



I still have my Trustee Savings Bank pass book. Apparently I

still have £1 6s 0d in it - last entry late 1966.



No who took over the Trustee Savings Bank? Lloyds? They still ought

to pay you the £1.30 plus interest...



But I only get a measly 7 years 'all my data'!



That doesn't really surprise me, you only *have* to keep records for

that long.



Somewhere I think I still have a Post Office Savings Bank account with

something like 1/6d deposited.

There must be a bit of interest accumulated since then, especially

during the 80s...





I dug my old book out last year, and sent it off for a refund. It had

interest added, and I was reimbursed.

--

Davey.

I've got one of those. I found out once where to send it, but Windows crashed and I lost the information. But as my address and signature have changed, I wonder if they'd give me the money anyway? It has some sentimental value in bringing back childhood memories, so for the moment I'm not too worried. I did cash in the National Savings certificates that my mum must have scrimped and saved to buy me. A not too insignificant sum, but inflation meant they were hardly the nest-egg mum must have intended.

Chris

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:47:01 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:54:53 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 01/10/2012 08:06, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:26:39 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.


That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

I might try there, then. I'm getting to prefer Calc as I find it easier to
use, but that might be because it's 9 years younger.
I'd love to know /why/ the sorting doesn't work, even if I can't fix it
curiosity and all that.


Well exactly. It changes the order in H but not in tandem with the other
columns. Crazy :-)

If a column won't sort correctly (read 'as expected') then surely it must be one of 2
things 1) The column or part of it is not selected to be sorted, or 2) the contents of the
cells are not what you think they are. For 1) make sure whole rows are selelcted not just
a rectangular block*. For 2) look for trailing or leading 'spaces', real "£" signs as
opposed to £'s displayed by the currency format, text instead of numeric cells, any
non-printing characters. Try manually re-typing in the values. Try pasting the data into
notepad then cut'n'paste into excel to get rid of any non-printing characters.


1) I've checke the cells immediately outside the populated area and there's
nothing in them. Tried selecting a larger area - no luck.

2) Don't seem to be any spurious spaces; £s are 'real'; all cells seem to be
as they should.

Pity it's financial - rather dissuades me from postin it for others to look
at!

*In excel, once you start the sort you can't see what area was selelcted so its difficult
to know if you accidentally left some data out of the sort. I've been bitten by that a few
times.

I didn't know that. LO gives exactly the same results, so it is probably the
file. All I do is select the dates then d/l the .xls.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On 01/10/2012 14:44, PeterC wrote:
On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:47:01 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:54:53 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 01/10/2012 08:06, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:26:39 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.


That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

I might try there, then. I'm getting to prefer Calc as I find it easier to
use, but that might be because it's 9 years younger.
I'd love to know /why/ the sorting doesn't work, even if I can't fix it
curiosity and all that.


Well exactly. It changes the order in H but not in tandem with the other
columns. Crazy :-)

If a column won't sort correctly (read 'as expected') then surely it must be one of 2
things 1) The column or part of it is not selected to be sorted, or 2) the contents of the
cells are not what you think they are. For 1) make sure whole rows are selelcted not just
a rectangular block*. For 2) look for trailing or leading 'spaces', real "£" signs as
opposed to £'s displayed by the currency format, text instead of numeric cells, any
non-printing characters. Try manually re-typing in the values. Try pasting the data into
notepad then cut'n'paste into excel to get rid of any non-printing characters.


1) I've checke the cells immediately outside the populated area and there's
nothing in them. Tried selecting a larger area - no luck.

2) Don't seem to be any spurious spaces; £s are 'real'; all cells seem to be
as they should.

Pity it's financial - rather dissuades me from postin it for others to look
at!

*In excel, once you start the sort you can't see what area was selelcted so its difficult
to know if you accidentally left some data out of the sort. I've been bitten by that a few
times.

I didn't know that. LO gives exactly the same results, so it is probably the
file. All I do is select the dates then d/l the .xls.

Are you and I the only ones with Santander online banking? Maybe someone
else could verify that the bank xls files are ok.
Perhaps there are just too many digits in the balance column :-)

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:40:36 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 01/10/2012 14:44, PeterC wrote:
On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:47:01 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:54:53 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

On 01/10/2012 08:06, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:26:39 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Thanks. The last column is just as currency - no formula - and copying and
pasting makes no difference.
The result is always the same in Excel 2003 and LibreOffice Calc, although
Calc offers the extended sorting.


That would drive me crazy. The people on the microsoft.public.excel
groups are very helpful

I might try there, then. I'm getting to prefer Calc as I find it easier to
use, but that might be because it's 9 years younger.
I'd love to know /why/ the sorting doesn't work, even if I can't fix it
curiosity and all that.


Well exactly. It changes the order in H but not in tandem with the other
columns. Crazy :-)

If a column won't sort correctly (read 'as expected') then surely it must be one of 2
things 1) The column or part of it is not selected to be sorted, or 2) the contents of the
cells are not what you think they are. For 1) make sure whole rows are selelcted not just
a rectangular block*. For 2) look for trailing or leading 'spaces', real "£" signs as
opposed to £'s displayed by the currency format, text instead of numeric cells, any
non-printing characters. Try manually re-typing in the values. Try pasting the data into
notepad then cut'n'paste into excel to get rid of any non-printing characters.


1) I've checke the cells immediately outside the populated area and there's
nothing in them. Tried selecting a larger area - no luck.

2) Don't seem to be any spurious spaces; £s are 'real'; all cells seem to be
as they should.

Pity it's financial - rather dissuades me from postin it for others to look
at!

*In excel, once you start the sort you can't see what area was selelcted so its difficult
to know if you accidentally left some data out of the sort. I've been bitten by that a few
times.

I didn't know that. LO gives exactly the same results, so it is probably the
file. All I do is select the dates then d/l the .xls.

Are you and I the only ones with Santander online banking? Maybe someone
else could verify that the bank xls files are ok.
Perhaps there are just too many digits in the balance column :-)

As it happens I have an ISA account with them.

I just tried downloading it in xls format and excel 2010 says "the file is not in the
format specified by the extension, verify its not corrupt... ". That might be because
excel 2010 expects xlsx format while the santander on is xlx, but that doesn't usually
trigger that message.

Nevertheless, it opened ok and the first thing I see is that they have tried to make the
excel page look like a statement rather than just basic data. The £-signs are NOT real,
they are the result of it being formatted as currency (you see this by looking at the
numbers in the edit bar - no £-sign there).

I next selected the data b6 to h10 (I only have 5 transactions) and sorted it on the "B"
(date) column. That worked fine with the dates now in ascending arder, and the balance
cells in "H" moved correctly with the dates, as did all the others.

In short, its working fine here, so it seems either you are doing something wrong or your
excel is corrupt in some way. Have you tried re-creating the sheet with typed-in data or
cut'n'pasted from the txt download?

As a last resort you could try the santander helpline or post for advice on the microsoft
excel forum.

--
Phil Addison

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:40:36 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

Pity it's financial - rather dissuades me from postin it for others to look
at!

*In excel, once you start the sort you can't see what area was selelcted so its difficult
to know if you accidentally left some data out of the sort. I've been bitten by that a few
times.

I didn't know that. LO gives exactly the same results, so it is probably the
file. All I do is select the dates then d/l the .xls.

Are you and I the only ones with Santander online banking? Maybe someone
else could verify that the bank xls files are ok.
Perhaps there are just too many digits in the balance column :-)

That'd be pointless - 123 has a cap of 20k effectively, so a long way to go
yet!
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:34:52 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

Are you and I the only ones with Santander online banking? Maybe someone
else could verify that the bank xls files are ok.
Perhaps there are just too many digits in the balance column :-)

As it happens I have an ISA account with them.

I just tried downloading it in xls format and excel 2010 says "the file is not in the
format specified by the extension, verify its not corrupt... ". That might be because
excel 2010 expects xlsx format while the santander on is xlx, but that doesn't usually
trigger that message.

Nevertheless, it opened ok and the first thing I see is that they have tried to make the
excel page look like a statement rather than just basic data. The £-signs are NOT real,
they are the result of it being formatted as currency (you see this by looking at the
numbers in the edit bar - no £-sign there).

I next selected the data b6 to h10 (I only have 5 transactions) and sorted it on the "B"
(date) column. That worked fine with the dates now in ascending arder, and the balance
cells in "H" moved correctly with the dates, as did all the others.

In short, its working fine here, so it seems either you are doing something wrong or your
excel is corrupt in some way. Have you tried re-creating the sheet with typed-in data or
cut'n'pasted from the txt download?

I've tried it with pasting from .txt and from copying the site. As I say, it
does exactly the same in Excel and Calc.

As a last resort you could try the santander helpline or post for advice on the microsoft
excel forum.

I might do that if I get a tuit. The only real niggle is the mismatch
between paper - Quicken - Santander. I can see no reason at all for having
the entries arseuppards.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:19:44 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 08:53:41 +0100, Mark wrote:

IME the most common security breach is where they somehow incercept
card details in transit and then use them until the card is stopped.

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

That is a common scenario but I was also referring to the information
being intercepted not directly from the user or their computer. I
would hope that few people would fall for phishing attempts nowadays.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:04:42 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:19:55 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
MS money stopped working for me years ago. The last UK version was,
IIRC, about 2004???

2009?, but GNUCash will import all formats of MS Money data.

I've not tried GNUcash. Is it any good?

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.

I'll have to get a round tuit to try it out. I'm not bothered whether
it's free or not. I am happy to pay for software that does the job
like I did with MS Money.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Mon, 1 Oct 2012 05:36:08 -0700 (PDT)
wrote:

On Friday, 28 September 2012 10:40:35 UTC+1, Davey wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 01:29:19 +0100

Frank Erskine wrote:



On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:47:43 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"

wrote:



On 27 Sep 2012 21:28:15 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:



I still have my Trustee Savings Bank pass book. Apparently I

still have £1 6s 0d in it - last entry late 1966.



No who took over the Trustee Savings Bank? Lloyds? They still
ought

to pay you the £1.30 plus interest...



But I only get a measly 7 years 'all my data'!



That doesn't really surprise me, you only *have* to keep records
for

that long.



Somewhere I think I still have a Post Office Savings Bank account
with

something like 1/6d deposited.

There must be a bit of interest accumulated since then, especially

during the 80s...





I dug my old book out last year, and sent it off for a refund. It
had

interest added, and I was reimbursed.

--

Davey.

I've got one of those. I found out once where to send it, but Windows
crashed and I lost the information. But as my address and signature
have changed, I wonder if they'd give me the money anyway? It has
some sentimental value in bringing back childhood memories, so for
the moment I'm not too worried. I did cash in the National Savings
certificates that my mum must have scrimped and saved to buy me. A
not too insignificant sum, but inflation meant they were hardly the
nest-egg mum must have intended.

Chris

My address was different, but not my signature. Give it a try, if it
fails, you are no worse off than you are now. Your local Post Office
probably has the form and address where to send it.
You can always scan the book before you send it off, if you want to keep
the memory. Probably a good idea anyway.
--
Davey.