When Copy-Paste Goes Wrong: Fixing General Journal Field Order Issues in Business Central

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We Don’t Want to Talk About How Much Time Was Wasted…

You know that moment when a client sighs and says, “How much time was wasted?”

Yeah… we’ve all been there.

But I like to look forward — not backward. So instead, I asked:

👉 How much time will be saved moving forward?


The Problem: Copy, Paste, and Chaos

A client was doing something we’ve all done, copying data from Excel straight into the General Journal in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It’s fast, it’s easy… until it isn’t.

When they pasted their data, everything looked fine — but when they reviewed prior to posting, the Description field wasn’t what they expected. Instead of their carefully entered descriptions, every line showed the G/L Account Description.

What happened?


The Culprit: Field Order

When pasting data into a Business Central journal, the system assumes your columns match the exact order of the fields in the page. In this case they matched but things were a bit out of order. 


In this case, the Account Type field was after the description which was causing the system to override the users desired description to be the account name. 


No error message. No warning. Just hours of confusion.

The Fix: Realign and Reorder

Once we spotted the issue, the fix was straightforward:

  1. Put the columns into the correct order in Business Central. We recommend using Profile (Roles) Customization for this vs Personalization's, so it affects all users using the same profile role. 
  2. Corrected the column order in Excel file where user was copying from. Remember your Excel layout should match the same order as Business Central. 


Bonus tip: If you frequently paste journal entries, create a saved Excel layout that mirrors your General Journal field order. It’ll save you and your team countless hours of cleanup. You can also use Standard Journals for things that don’t change much. Using Standard Journals in Business Central


The Lesson: Accuracy Over Speed

Copy-paste can be a time-saver — until it’s not.

Taking an extra minute to double-check your field order can prevent hours of rework (and a few heart palpitations).

So, while we don’t want to dwell on how much time was lost, we’re thrilled about how much time will be saved moving forward.

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Kristen Hosman is a Microsoft MVP in Denver. She works with Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies. You can also connect with her through this link: Kristen Hosman | Linktree

 

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