HSBC csv/excel statement download stopped, HELP!!!

popalock

I've just found out, to my horror, that HSBC has stopped allowing retail banking to download as a csv /excel compatible file.  Apparently, they stopped about a year ago.  Is there a work around?  I won't be able to do my accounts easily and it makes monitoring/review of my expenditure over the course of the year much harder.  It's such a bad thing I'm tempted to use another account as my go-to account in future.  Eg Wise.  Any suggestions?  Online banking allows me to get a midata download but this removes personal identifying information (like names and numbers in the description with asterisks instead) as it's used for price comparison purposes I'm told.

datlex

If you have not used it in a year, what have you been using during this time.  If you view your documents and statements as PDF does it provide the information you need?  If it does if you can get editable software you could convert those to excel.

colsten

Wise is not a bank and doesn't have FSCS protection. This may of may not be an issue for you but it seems an odd alternative for a current account.

Is it a personal current account or a business account you need?

colsten

Using the Search option, you can still download .csv files for the last 12ish months. Anything older, you are probably reduced to .PDF statements.

[Deleted User]

HSBC really need to pull their finger out, closing branches yet their site and app is behind the times. They have only just added the ability to pay a credit card easily (non-DD). Before you had to set up a new payee manually.

I did notice some pages on the HSBC have a new design so I assume a big update is coming.

Spreadsheetman

popalock said:

I've just found out, to my horror, that HSBC has stopped allowing retail banking to download as a csv /excel compatible file.  Apparently, they stopped about a year ago.  Is there a work around?  I won't be able to do my accounts easily and it makes monitoring/review of my expenditure over the course of the year much harder.  It's such a bad thing I'm tempted to use another account as my go-to account in future.  Eg Wise.  Any suggestions?  Online banking allows me to get a midata download but this removes personal identifying information (like names and numbers in the description with asterisks instead) as it's used for price comparison purposes I'm told.

Eh? There's a download link next to the print icon at the bottom of the current transaction view. I've just downloaded my transactions in csv format.

popalock

@colsten thanks for the tip, you're a star, forgot about that option.  last 12 months is better than nothing.  The formatting isn't the same as the previous extracts (which was cleaner) but it's better than nothing.  True, Wise isn't a proper bank account but it's just a stop gap.  I'm behind on all sorts.  Have been putting off going through my finances which is mega poor I know.  Anyway better late than never.  I just didn't anticipate them removing this feature.

Surely we can all agree this is awful?  It's 2021, the era of big data and all that.  And HSBC goes backwards.  Preventing a full ledger extract into excel is a MASSIVE issue in my mind.  God knows what they are thinking but I might have to change banks just because of this.

I also have an HSBC business account and they did the same thing but because I was more on top of my business bank account the previous 12 months was all I needed as I had earlier data dumps.  Having said that recently they re-introduced statement csv downloads so I'm hoping they'll do the same thing to personal accounts.

popalock

@colsten actually the search function doesn't work, you can only download what is visible after running the search.  And you can't go to the next page - I'm only able to get a full data dump for 1.5 months.  Sorry, this is shocking IMO

colsten

You could ask them to fix their Search function, which is clearly not working as intended.


But if you are unhappy with HSBC, and if .csv files are a must, you could try Starling Bank. According to their app, they allow you to create PDF or CSV statements for 'specific dates up to a year apart'

colsten

Spreadsheetman said:

popalock said:

I've just found out, to my horror, that HSBC has stopped allowing retail banking to download as a csv /excel compatible file.  Apparently, they stopped about a year ago.  Is there a work around?  I won't be able to do my accounts easily and it makes monitoring/review of my expenditure over the course of the year much harder.  It's such a bad thing I'm tempted to use another account as my go-to account in future.  Eg Wise.  Any suggestions?  Online banking allows me to get a midata download but this removes personal identifying information (like names and numbers in the description with asterisks instead) as it's used for price comparison purposes I'm told.

Eh? There's a download link next to the print icon at the bottom of the current transaction view. I've just downloaded my transactions in csv format.

You have missed that the download removes personal identifying information (like names and numbers in the description with asterisks instead) - so it's pretty useless.

datlex

Further to my earlier message if you can get the data as searchable PDF you should be able to use Power Query in Excel to analyse and make reports for the data.