# Is the number of counterbalancing groups in shelf limited?

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/is-the-number-of-counterbalancing-groups-in-shelf-limited/37784>\
**Category:** Online experiments\
**Created:** [December 1, 2023, 2:59pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/is-the-number-of-counterbalancing-groups-in-shelf-limited/37784 "2023-12-01T14:59:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![M11](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/m11/32/4334_2.png) [@M11](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/M11)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2023, 2:59pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/is-the-number-of-counterbalancing-groups-in-shelf-limited/37784/1 "2023-12-01T14:59:41Z")

</div>

Version 2022.2.4

Hi!  
At the moment I am trying to create a counterbalanced online experiment with shelf.  
I have 5 groups to counterbalance. The problem is that I can only define 4 groups in the shelf component.  
This means that if I define for example groups: “A”, “B”, “C”, “D”, “E” and groupSizes: 1,1,1,1,1 and I click on the update button, then the first line in group “A” and groupsize “1” is deleted.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/5/b/5bba7b81f2052f040153c6bed8e9620590bb44ea.png)

Does this mean that I can only counterbalance four groups?

Thank you very much!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![M11](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/m11/32/4334_2.png) [@M11](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/M11)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2023, 4:04pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/is-the-number-of-counterbalancing-groups-in-shelf-limited/37784/2 "2023-12-01T16:04:24Z")

</div>

I don’t know why but it worked when I wrote the groups and groupSizes from left to right (not from top to down):  
“A”,“B”,“C”,“D”,“E”

vs.

“A”  
“B”  
“C”  
“D”  
“E”