“It says this file has already been imported”
You download a fresh statement and the software insists it has seen it before. The check behind this is a file-level identifier, not the transactions — so a file full of new activity can be refused because of a value the bank never bothered to change.
Symptoms
A brand-new download is refused as a duplicate The transactions inside are clearly not in your register Every download from this bank now triggers the same message
What actually causes it
The bank reuses the file identifier
OFX files carry OLDFILEUID and NEWFILEUID values meant to be unique per download. Banks that emit the same value every time make each new file look like a repeat of the last one.
The import was genuinely partly completed
An import interrupted after registering the file but before writing transactions leaves the identifier recorded with nothing to show for it, so the retry is refused.
The same file was downloaded twice
Worth ruling out first: two downloads of the same period really are the same file, and the check is doing its job.
How to fix it
- Drop the file into the fixer below and check the transaction count and dates against what is already in your register — that settles whether it is genuinely new.
- If it is new, the identifier is the obstacle rather than the data; importing through the manual file-import path often bypasses the check that the automatic update applies.
- Where the bank reuses identifiers on every download, keep import ranges non-overlapping so you never need to retry the same period.
- If an interrupted import is the cause, restore from backup before retrying, otherwise you risk a half-written period.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
Seeing the file's real contents is the quickest way to tell a genuine duplicate from an identifier the bank forgot to change. Free, no signup, no upload.
Open the fixer