# Choosing which data to save

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/choosing-which-data-to-save/26909>\
**Category:** Builder\
**Tags:** data\
**Created:** [January 19, 2022, 7:27pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/choosing-which-data-to-save/26909 "2022-01-19T19:27:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![aunahmed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee59a6/32.png) [@aunahmed](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/aunahmed)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2022, 7:27pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/choosing-which-data-to-save/26909/1 "2022-01-19T19:27:07Z")

</div>

If this template helps then use it. If not then just delete and start from scratch.

**OS** Win10  
**PsychoPy version** 2021.2.3:  
**Standard Standalone? (y/n)** y  
**What are you trying to achieve?:** Get a CSV file that does not contain data irrelevant to me

**What did you try to make it work?:** Go to the Data tab under experiment settings

**What specifically went wrong when you tried that?:** There is no option to choose which data to have in the CSV file

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wakecarter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/wakecarter/32/5753_2.png) [@wakecarter](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/wakecarter)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2022, 2:12pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/choosing-which-data-to-save/26909/2 "2022-01-20T14:12:56Z")

</div>

By default, most components save their onset time when run offline. This adds two additional columns. Open each component and untick “Save onset/offset times” (usually in the Data tab). To supress this data.

For keyboard responses you can select store nothing (e.g. for when participants are reading instructions).

If you have additional loops that you don’t need, untick is trials.

> [@PyschoPy Reformatting Data Output](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/pyschopy-reformatting-data-output/22497):
>
> Hello! I recently made an experiment on PsychoPy, and I’ve had some issues with the data output CSV file. Since PsychoPy makes a new row for each trial and my experiment is fairly simple, there are a lot of boxes that remain empty. I was wondering if there is a way for me to change the data output format so that all of the column data are displayed in one row. Additionally, when the participant presses a certain key to answer the multiple-choice questions, the data for the key that they pressed…

> [@Is there any additional documentation on data file (.csv) output?](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/is-there-any-additional-documentation-on-data-file-csv-output/26547):
>
> Hi Folks. So I’me getting close to having my experiment working (it’s a bit epic) and I now need to think about what data to capture and how to write it to an output file. I’ve had a look at the .csv file my experiment currently generates and it is bewildering. So much data. Is there a column for every single component? Why? The only doco on this I am aware of for this stuff is the scant two paragraphs on page 17 of the manual that I have (version 21.1.2) - but I’m not sure where I got thi…