# Survey data fields omitted from .csv downloads

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/survey-data-fields-omitted-from-csv-downloads/47849>\
**Category:** Pavlovia Surveys\
**Created:** [September 8, 2026, 12:04am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/survey-data-fields-omitted-from-csv-downloads/47849 "2026-09-08T00:04:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![deborah.apthorp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/deborah.apthorp/32/134_2.png) [@deborah.apthorp](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/deborah.apthorp)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 12:04am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/survey-data-fields-omitted-from-csv-downloads/47849/1 "2026-09-08T00:04:19Z")

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Hi developers,

I’m in the middle of running a combo online experiment and survey project, and I’m trying to write R code to wrangle the data for my student. I have run into a minor problem - when a participant does not answer a question (I’m not sure how this is happening given that all our survey questions are set to “required”, but anyway it has happened), **the whole question field** is omitted from the downloaded datafile. So if they haven’t answered, say, q3, their datafile has q1, q2, q4. This makes it tricky to loop through the files and append the results, since each row is now a different length depending on the missing data.

Could the next iteration of Pavlovia surveys please address this issue?

Thanks

Deborah.

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**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:** [September 8, 2026, 5:49am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/survey-data-fields-omitted-from-csv-downloads/47849/2 "2026-09-08T05:49:03Z")

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In general data columns are only added when they have data. You could download the survey data file (which has all participants and therefore all columns where at least one participant answered) or use database saving in PsychoPy (which skips the individual CSV files and instead creates a downloadable CSV with all participants (from the point that database saving is turned on).

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**Author:** ![JensBoelte](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/jensboelte/32/9060_2.png) [@JensBoelte](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/JensBoelte)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 11:39am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/survey-data-fields-omitted-from-csv-downloads/47849/3 "2026-09-09T11:39:27Z")

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Hello @deborah.apthorp

The following R-Code should read the data.

```auto
library(tidyverse)

#generate list of all csv
my_files <- list.files(pattern = "\\.csv$")

# # add file names for later identification
names(my_files) <- my_files

# read each file separately
my_dfs <- lapply(my_files, read_csv)

# combine everything
df_combined <- bind_rows(my_dfs, .id = "df")

```

Best wishes Jens

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**Author:** ![deborah.apthorp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/deborah.apthorp/32/134_2.png) [@deborah.apthorp](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/deborah.apthorp)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 5:24pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/survey-data-fields-omitted-from-csv-downloads/47849/4 "2026-09-09T17:24:22Z")

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Hi Jens,

I already tried bind\_rows but it does not work if the rows have different numbers of columns.

Thanks

Deborah.