If you are an HSBC customer you will already know that getting old statements out of the online banking system is a nightmare. You can download recent statements as CSV files but any statements considered "Previous" are not available for download.

You can view them on the screen but what if you want an electronic copy for your records?

It would be great if HSBC allowed you to download your statements as PDF files every month as American Express do.

So what can you do instead?

You can view a statement and then save the web page but the HTML is so complicated these always look messy.

I've created a VBA script within Microsoft Excel that allows you to save the web page of an old statement and then process it. This gives you a nice neat, simple HTML file and a CSV file.

The example below shows the HTML output of a typical bank statement after processing :


The script also creates a simple HTML index so you can easily browse the statements.

How Does It Work?
You view each statement online. You then save each page from your browser as an HTML file (the awful navigation within the HSBC online banking system doesn't make this as easy as it should be!). Shove all the files in the "input" directory. Run the script. The "output_html" and "output_csv" folders are then filled with processed versions.

Use the index.htm file to browse.

You now have a proper record of your statements.

Here are some reasons why the current HSBC online statement facility sucks :

- You can not download old statements into a sensible electronic format
- You can only download CSV files for recent statements
- CSV files are fine but a nicely formatted PDF would be a lot nicer
- In order to view old statements you have to make lots of mouse clicks. When you use the "Return to list" button you are dumped back in the current year rather than the year you were looking at. This results in hundreds of mouse clicks just to review a handful of old statement.

HSBC want you to go paperless "to save the environment" but then give you a crap system to replace it.

I would urge all HSBC customers to email HSBC and demand a proper way of obtaining statements electronically. A PDF download would be nice!

Give my PDF downloads of my statements and I will go paperless on all my accounts.

Come on HSBC it's not rocket science (well not for me anyway).

Note : As with anything related to online banking you should take appropriate precautions when downloading stuff off the internet. If you are not able to check my macro code and see how it works please get someone who can do it for you. Its clean but don't take my word for it!