diff --git a/src/bin/gnucash-strip-svn-datafile.sh b/src/bin/gnucash-strip-svn-datafile.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..5c1a3c7d80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/bin/gnucash-strip-svn-datafile.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+# This script strips data elements from a gnucash data file that have
+# been introduced in the SVN-trunk version of gnucash, but are not
+# backwards-compatible to older versions of gnucash.
+
+ORIGFILE=$1
+ORIGTMPFILE="${ORIGFILE}.gunzip"
+BKUPFILE="${ORIGFILE}.svn.gz"
+TMPFILE="${ORIGFILE}.tmp"
+
+if [ -f ${ORIGFILE} ] ; then
+
+    # Detect compression
+    in_gzip_format=yes
+    gzip -ql ${ORIGFILE} > /dev/null 2> /dev/null || in_gzip_format=no
+
+    # Uncompress the file
+    if [ "$in_gzip_format" = "yes" ] ; then
+	gunzip -cd ${ORIGFILE} > ${ORIGTMPFILE}
+    else
+	cat ${ORIGFILE} > ${ORIGTMPFILE}
+    fi
+
+    # Remove the elements that are not backwards-compatible
+    grep -v '<sx:enabled>.</sx:enabled>' ${ORIGTMPFILE} > ${TMPFILE}
+
+    # Print result of element removal
+    echo "Removed the following elements:"
+    diff -u ${ORIGTMPFILE} ${TMPFILE}
+    echo "Keeping old data file as \"${BKUPFILE}\""
+
+    # Compress the result again
+    if [ "$in_gzip_format" = "yes" ] ; then
+	gzip -c ${ORIGTMPFILE} > ${BKUPFILE}
+	gzip -c ${TMPFILE} > ${ORIGFILE}
+    else
+	cat ${ORIGTMPFILE} > ${BKUPFILE}
+	cat ${TMPFILE} > ${ORIGFILE}
+    fi
+
+    # Remove temporary files
+    rm ${ORIGTMPFILE}
+    rm ${TMPFILE}
+
+else
+    echo "$0: File $1 not found."
+fi