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    Error occurred while manually uploading COUNTER 5 reports in Alma

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    • Product: Alma

     

    Question

    When attempting to manually upload a COUNTER 5 report, Alma gives an Oops error. Why was this error message given, and what are some tips to troubleshoot these usage data files?

    kcs image.png

    Answer

    Incorrect Formatting

    This error usually indicates that the data within the file you are uploading is incorrectly formatted or corrupt. 

    Some common causes and possible solutions are below:

    • Incorrectly formatted dates: Check that dates are in a format similar to “Mmm-yyyy”, for example “Aug-2019”
    • Incorrectly formatted column headers: Check that there are no spaces between words, typically underscores are used in place of spaces
    • Incorrectly formatted numbers: Remove formatting from numbers, for example do not use decimals or thousands separators
    • Empty cells: Check that there are no empty cells within the usage data, try replacing any blanks with zeros
    • Corrupt data: Remove all formatting, copy and paste the data into a new spreadsheet without any formatting

    If any of these issues are found, correct the issue and try manually uploading the file again in Alma.

    Large Files

    This error can also be returned when loading very large usage files, resulting in an Alma timeout before the file is fully processed. This is common with reports that include large amounts of data, such as TR (Title Master) reports.

    Try splitting the usage data into parts and uploading the data in smaller files.

    Error in Row 101

    "Error in row 101 column ** : missing period title. Expected date value should be in one of the following formats : MMM-yy, MMM yy, yyy-MM-dd, MMM.yy, MMM.yy, MMM/yy, MMM-yyyy, yy-MMM, yy MMM, yy.MMM, MMM_yyyy" is due to an extra comma delimiter being included at the end of each line. 

    COUNTER error.PNG

    For the header, Alma ignores these extra delimiters, because there are only ever expected to be two columns for header values. However, any number of Usage Date Months can be included in a report, resulting in a variable possible number of columns. Because of this, Alma sees the extra delimiter and thinks there should be another month listed after the last month. Since it only encounters an empty value, it returns an error.

    This can be corrected either by removing that extra comma in a text editor, or by deleting the first empty column in Excel. In the error above, it would be column 24 or X.