Can't upload from file

Hello Melanie,

Sorry to hear that you are having trouble with file uploads in VStar.

As described on page 9 of the VStar User Manual  (which you can download from here: https://www.aavso.org/vstar), there are only two acceptable formats for file uploads:

AAVSO download format - which is what you get when you download data using our Data Download tool: https://www.aavso.org/data-download and is also described here: https://www.aavso.org/format-data-file

Simple format - Which is just Julian Date,Magnitude

Either can be comma or tab delimited, but they must be plain text (ASCII) files (i.e. no Word docs or .fits files).

There is one other way to upload data for plotting into VStar and that is through use of a plugin such as the one that reads data in the AAVSO Upload File Format which is described here: https://www.aavso.org/aavso-extended-file-format This is exactly the same format that you would use to upload a file of data using WebObs. Using a VStar plugin requires the extra step of installing the plugin which is described here: https://www.aavso.org/vstar-plugin-library

If you are still having trouble, please feel free to contact me offline (sara [at] aavso.org) or give me a ring at AAVSO HQ today.

Best wishes,
Sara

Hi Sara,

Thank you so much, I had seen CSV files uploaded successfully into VStar and so I tried to do the same.  But I tested out your suggestions and they worked but it only let me import the url, I could not download the data that it displayed in another tab, is that the way it works?

Thanks again!

Hey does anyone know how to upload the CSV ASAS-SN data files?

I uploaded them weeks ago and it worked and I have since tried tonight and gotten a "no observations in that period" error.  It is the same file, the plugin has been updated and it is a CSV file downloaded from the ASAS-SN database....

Help and thanks!

I am having the same Open-New Star From File issue.

I have successfully uploaded the files to the AAVSO Database and when I try to open them

locally with VStar, I get "No observations for the specified period.'.

Nothing on setting a ' Date Range ' in the manual, so looks like a real bug.

Seems like this has been around a while, the threads show this issue back to 2019???

Is this being worked on???

DK

David

Here you go, this is a small file which fails.

Thanks a lot,

Dave

Hello Dave,

When I opened your file in my plain text editor, I could see a bunch of extra commas and some quote marks that were (presumably) put there by Excel. Actually I am a bit surprised that WebObs even accepted that file.

Anyway, once those extraneous marks were removed, it opened just fine in VStar. Please see attached files:

Original_file.png - a screen capture of the file you tried to upload
AAVSO_fmt_TV-Boo-Fixed.csv - Your file after I removed extra commas and quote marks
VStar_plot.png - The plot of your data in VStar

Personally, I am always a bit leery of uploading files in WebObs or VStar that were created in Excel without checking them in a plain text editor first.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Sara

Sara/David

I edited my files as you show here and it still fails.  I downloaded the file you list as "fixed" and it still fails on my system in VStar.

I even opened them in Win Notepad and re-saved them as well as saved them as a xxx.txt. All fail the same way.

Is there some reason that you cannot use the same parser as the database upload does?

This is very frustrating not to be able to work offline on data that has been successfully uploaded.

Dave