Metadata Validation Errors FAQ

Common metadata validation errors and solutions

Metadata validation error messages intended to be succinct but may become too terse. Below we provide additional context for common error messages and guidance on resolving those issues. If more information is needed, please email scp-support@broadinstitute.zendesk.com.

ERROR:'<column header>' is a required property

Reason	Required metadata is missing from the metadata file.
Solution	Add missing metadata as a new column in metadata file.

ERROR:<column header>: only alphanumeric characters and underscore allowed in metadata name

Reason	Valid characters for metadata names is limited.
Solution	Remove all non-alphanumeric characters (except underscore) from column header.

ERROR:Numeric annotation, <column header>, contains non-numeric data (or unidentified NA values)

Reason	Metadata TYPE declared as numeric but column contains strings or empty cells.
Solution	Ensure that all values for <metadata> are numeric.

ERROR:<column header>: Could not parse provided ontology id, "PATO_0000461, PATO_0000461, PATO_0000461"

Reason	Arrays of metadata information must be delimited by the pipe (|) symbol.
Solution	Replace with pipe(|) delimiter.

ERROR:<column header>: '<text>' does not match '^[-A-Za-z0-9]+[_:][-A-Za-z0-9]+'

Reason	Metadata validation expected ontology IDs as values for the specified column header.
Solution	Browse the ontology listed in required conventional metadata and select terms that best describe your data. Note that an ontology_label column with the natural language name is also required.