# "default text" appears when I have an empty cell in a excel row

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260>\
**Category:** Builder\
**Created:** [April 2, 2019, 5:52pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260 "2019-04-02T17:52:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mariana\_Terra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/mariana_terra/32/4139_2.png) [@Mariana\_Terra](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/Mariana_Terra)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 5:52pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260/1 "2019-04-02T17:52:23Z")

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**OS** (e.g. Win10): Windows 10 home  
**PsychoPy version** (e.g. 1.84.x): v3.0.3

I’m making a self paced reading experiment. The participants read sentences word by word and at the end of SOME of these setences there are a image followed by a question.

In the excel file, the image row works properly: when there is a image, it is shown; when there is an empty cell nothing is shown.  
BUT with the question (Text component) it is not working. When I have a question in the row “question” the question appears fine, when I have an empty cell, it appears “default text”.

Does anyone know how to solve it?  
Psychopy is not able to simply skip the empty cells of the excel file?

I don

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**Author:** ![Mariana\_Terra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/mariana_terra/32/4139_2.png) [@Mariana\_Terra](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/Mariana_Terra)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 5:56pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260/2 "2019-04-02T17:56:43Z")

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I sent the message without ending it.

I don’t know how to code. I’m using BUILDER.

 ![2019-04-02](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/e/5/e550987ce5a9123ab7c70a6a4df5ebee2989d83e.png)

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**Author:** ![sol](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/sol/32/15018_2.png) [@sol](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/sol)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 8:49pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260/3 "2019-04-02T20:49:26Z")

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If you use some spaces or a tab in the empty cells, will this fix the issue?

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**Author:** ![Mariana\_Terra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/mariana_terra/32/4139_2.png) [@Mariana\_Terra](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/Mariana_Terra)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260/4 "2019-04-03T19:34:14Z")

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yesssss! it solved it. Thank you!!

(I put spaces 😉

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**Author:** ![kcmmm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/kcmmm/32/12468_2.png) [@kcmmm](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/kcmmm)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260/5 "2020-11-08T17:23:31Z")

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What about for syncing to Pavlovia? It does not like the spaces and instead replaces with “NaN”. How do I fix this?

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**Author:** ![kcmmm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/kcmmm/32/12468_2.png) [@kcmmm](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/kcmmm)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2020, 7:24pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/default-text-appears-when-i-have-an-empty-cell-in-a-excel-row/7260/6 "2020-11-08T19:24:16Z")

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@jon