I am testing the preloading of data without the roster data, would that cause error 42. I have the id from the previous interview but didn’t load data into any of the roster tables.
Additionally I am having problems preloading date data. the date records are in the yyyy-mm-dd format with no leading or trailing characters. Additionally in one of the fields we only use the format of yyyy-dd via an input mask, do I have to use the full date format in the file.
Dear @neville_csoit,
I also faced the same kind of issue.
When you build a .tab file by copying data out of Excel, three small things sneak in that Survey Solutions is very strict about:
Hidden line breaks inside cells. If any item description or note was ever pasted from another source (not typed directly with Alt+Enter), the cell can contain an invisible line-break character. Excel displays it fine, but when the file is saved as tab-delimited text, that line break becomes a literal new line — which splits one row of data into two broken rows. Survey Solutions reads each of those broken halves as incomplete, giving errors like:
PL0042: Id column doesn't have any value — the first half of the broken row is missing its ID/link-back column.
PL0009: Roster Id is inconsistent with roster size — the second half’s leftover text lands in the ID column instead of a real number.
Stray spaces in the ID that links roster rows back to the main file. A tiny typo like "Nabarangpur- Nabarangpur" instead of "Nabarangpur-Nabarangpur" means that row no longer matches anything in the main file — it becomes an “orphan” row (PL0008).
The same item code repeated for the same market by accident during copy-paste — this shows up as a duplicate roster ID (PL0006).
None of this is a mistake on your part; it’s a very common side effect of copying data through Excel, and it’s basically invisible until Survey Solutions’ strict parser catches it.
Ways to solve it:
Use “=TRIM(CLEAN(A2))” formula in every text-based cell.
CLEAN() removes hidden line breaks, TRIM() removes stray extra spaces. Copy the helper column’s values back over the original column, then re-export as tab-delimited text.
For duplicates: select the ID column → Conditional Formatting → Highlight Duplicate Values, then check whether any duplicate is for the same market (a real problem) versus different markets (expected and fine).
That helped, something else to look out for. I got it to load it seemed I also had extra blank lines below my data… frustrating.
Do you have any idea on the other problem (PL0014) - date format. I will also trim the date fields in the future to see if this helps. I removed the date field data for now to get it to load.
. That’s what happens when you make assumptions!!. Easy fix.