How to use a .csv file as conditions file without getting an error message

[klarO]

Hi,
I’m sorry if this is a very basic question, but I searched the forum and couldn’t find similar threads, so I’d be really happy if someone knows the answer.

I have an experiment that I mainly built in the builder (just very little customised code components). Ultimately, I want it to run online. So I’m trying to make it compatible with Pavlovia and therefore I wanted to exchange the .xlsx files I’m using as conditions-files in several loops for .csv-files.

For some of the .csv-files that I created from the Excel-files it works to use them as conditions-files, for others however I get an error message when trying to set them as the condtions-file of a loop. The error message says that it is an unhandled internal error - I will attach a screenshot here:

So my question is: What can I do to use the .csv-file? Some of the fields of the csv-files also contain commas, but actually I set the delimiter to the semicolon, so I don’t think this should have an impact, right?

Thank you so much for taking the time and helping me!
Best, Klaro.

[wakecarter]

Where did you set the delimiter to semi-colon?

I normally use xlsx files with Pavlovia but for one project I’ve been asked to switch to CSV (because it works better with GitLab). This broke some of my Excel files, but I was able to fix them by saving in UTF-8 format.

[klarO]

Thank you for your answer!

I set the delimiter to semi-colon when saving the files as CSV in UTF-8 format (just when saving them from .xlsx to .csv, but not in PsychoPy).

When trying to pilot the experiment on Pavlovia it gets stuck on the “initialising”-page and I thought it might have to do something with the way pandas could be used to handle the Excel-files, that’s why I wanted to change them to CSV.

[wakecarter]

If you use CSV files with PsychoPy, they need to be comma delimited. UTF-8 should cope with the commas in the cells.

Also,

Wakefield's Daily Tips

“initialising…” isn’t an error message If you try to run an experiment online and you get a blank screen with the word initialising… in the centre, you need to investigate further before asking for help. [image] This indicates a launch error, which is usually a syntax error in your JavaScript file that wasn’t caught by the checks during synchronisation, and may be in a Before Experiment code component tab. The most common cause for this error is that you are trying to import a Python library,…

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Developer Tools If you encounter an error in an online study, open the Developer tools console using Ctl-Shift-I in Windows/Chrome, Cmd-Opt-J or Cmd-Opt-I in Mac/Chrome, F12 in IE/Edge, Ctrl-Shift-J in Windows/Safari or Ctrl-Opt-J in Mac/Safari. [image] [image] Select the Console tab at the top and errors item on the left to view errors. Ignore the 404 error related to favicon.ico Look for the error that appears on the main screen and click on the link next to Scheduler._currentTask. Take…

[wakecarter]

I take it back.

I’ve just tested a variety of formats and both semi-colon and tab delimited spreadsheets work with PsychoPy, both locally and online.

Wakefield's Daily Tips

Spreadsheets can be semicolon or tab delimited I was expecting to see an error message when I tried to use a semi-colon delimited spreadsheet, but it appears that alternative delimiters do still work. In addition to semi-colon and tab, pipe symbols (|) also work online but not locally. Cells containing delimiters (such as commas) should be enclosed in quotes.

Please could you upload an example of a spreadsheet that is giving you this error?

[klarO]

Hi, thank you for trying it, and great to know that other delimiters work as well. I think it might have been a local problem on my PC, because I tried it with a new experiment and it worked there. Sorry to have taken the time!
And thank you for pointing out the developer tools, they were really helpful with the “initialising”-page, which also works now.