# Wakefield's Daily Tips

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/wakefields-daily-tips/43371>\
**Category:** Blog\
**Tags:** online, pavlovia\
**Created:** [January 1, 2025, 3:36pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/wakefields-daily-tips/43371 "2025-01-01T15:36:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 122

<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [May 12, 2026, 7:28am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/wakefields-daily-tips/43371/122 "2026-05-12T07:28:41Z")

</div>

## Download your data before switching your experiment to inactive

When running an experiment on Pavlovia, the files exist on two separate servers.

1. [gitlab.pavlovia.org](http://gitlab.pavlovia.org)

This is where files get uploaded when you sync from Builder.

1. [run.pavlovia.org](http://run.pavlovia.org)

A copy is created here when you activate a study (change to Piloting or Running).

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/4/3/439ad7eb3449c3e06832fbfb14474747841140ae.png)

Participant data is initially stored on the run server and then transferred to the GitLab server.

If you download data from the project page you are downloading from the run server. N.B. If you are saving in database format then only the log file gets transferred, and data can only be downloaded from the project page.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/5/e/5e13db1db7f93242318f955410791e49c1647161.png)

If you change your experiment to inactive then it gets deleted from the run server along with any data stored there. This isn’t usually an issue, but if for any reason the data hasn’t transferred to the GitLab server this would result in data loss.

Therefore **download your data from the project page** before setting the project to inactive. You can switch it to piloting to prevent additional participants from launching it.

It is good practice to delete old experiments from the run server by switching them to inactive, but do not be hasty. Check you have all of your data first, and don’t assume that everything has been transferred to Gitlab automatically.

> [@Issue with Download Results returning an empty archive despite 36 submissions](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/issue-with-download-results-returning-an-empty-archive-despite-36-submissions/47112):
>
> Hello, I ran an experiment on Pavlovia, and it currently shows 36 Submitted. Yesterday, while data collection was still ongoing, I was able to download a results file via Download results that contained data for approximately 27 participants. However, when I now use Download results from the same experiment page, the downloaded archive is empty. The data folder is present, but it contains no files. I also checked the GitLab repository. This project currently does not have a data folder, and I…

N.B. If you add the data folder to .gitignore, it will stop data being added from the run server, as well as from your local data folder.

> [@Download Results returning empty 160B zip archive](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/download-results-returning-empty-160b-zip-archive/47235):
>
> OS: macOS PsychoPy version: 2026.1.3 Standard Standalone Installation: y URL of experiment: [SAT [PsychoPy]](https://run.pavlovia.org/philosophist/sat-pilot) (GitLab ID: #526792) Do you want it to also run locally? n What are you trying to achieve? Downloading participant result CSV files from two completed experiments via the “Download Results” button on the Pavlovia dashboard. What did you try to make it work? Tried downloading results from both projects separately Confirmed both experiments are in RUNNING mode with credits prope…

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