# Text stimulus does not appear

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/text-stimulus-does-not-appear/14392>\
**Category:** Builder\
**Created:** [June 19, 2020, 12:25am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/text-stimulus-does-not-appear/14392 "2020-06-19T00:25:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anniet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7993a0/32.png) [@anniet](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/anniet)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2020, 12:25am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/text-stimulus-does-not-appear/14392/1 "2020-06-19T00:25:03Z")

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URL to experiment: [gap\_effect\_manual [PsychoPy]](https://run.pavlovia.org/ferberlab/gap-effect/html)

I have created an experiment in the Builder and put it onto Pavlovia.  
Everything works fine, except in my trials, where the target itself simply does not appear (a text stimulus comprising of simply a dot •). This occurs only when running online; the targets appear when I run the experiment on my device.

I do not understand what could be wrong here. I have attached the target’s properties here:

 ![Screen Shot 2020-06-18 at 8.19.05 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/a/c/acd37c5c1f6539dc1db4ce504e5aa202b62c8541.png)

target\_side refers to a column in my excel file with locations like (0.35, 0).  
target\_placeholder is a stimulus that appears for a specified duration.  
Weirdest thing is, the key responses I allow DO effectively force the end of each trial routine, and they are only allowed if the target.status == STARTED. So the program knows that the target is there…it just isn’t appearing.

Thanks in advance.

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**Author:** ![Michael](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/michael/32/16_2.png) [@Michael](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/Michael)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2020, 1:10am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/text-stimulus-does-not-appear/14392/2 "2020-06-19T01:10:21Z")

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Units can be an issue, if they differ between online and locally. Have you defined them explicitly, or are you relying on defaults? e.g. 0.1 pixels can be invisible, while 0.1 in norm or height units is quite large.

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**Author:** ![anniet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7993a0/32.png) [@anniet](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/anniet)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2020, 1:25am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/text-stimulus-does-not-appear/14392/3 "2020-06-19T01:25:08Z")

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Hi Michael, my units are in ‘height.’ I also have a central stimulus that also has a height of 0.1 and it appears just fine, though its location is (0,0). Could it be my target’s locations? Maybe somehow they are different online? Though I thought the “height” units setting should fix that…

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**Author:** ![Michael](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/michael/32/16_2.png) [@Michael](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/Michael)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2020, 1:33am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/text-stimulus-does-not-appear/14392/4 "2020-06-19T01:33:11Z")

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> [@anniet](#):
>
> Could it be my target’s locations?

Test it at a constant value (0, 0) and see.

This also might act as a check of whether the result of evaluating your `target_side` variable differs in JavaScript vs Python. e.g. does that variable contain square or round brackets? If that is where the problem lies, it might be better to avoid evaluating, and just split that into two variables, and refer to them explicitly like this:

```
[target_side_x, target_side_y]

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anniet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7993a0/32.png) [@anniet](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/anniet)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2020, 2:22am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/text-stimulus-does-not-appear/14392/5 "2020-06-19T02:22:11Z")

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Changing the position to square brackets in the excel sheet worked! Thank you.