Here are some tips for using templates:

The header of each report must match the template, here are some tips and common errors to look for in the formatting of Counter reports:  

* It's highly recommended to review Counter reports in a text editor (we recommend Notepad++, or another freely downloaded text editing tool) before upload, or when troubleshooting.  Many formatting errors are hidden in Excel or other spreadsheet programs, and therefore much more difficult to troubleshoot or fix.  It's also recommended to find settings in your text editor to display formatting characters like tabs, spaces and line returns, as well as line numbers, to help find split lines or extra tabs and lines.

* Text in <brackets> is specific to the individual report. In the header,lines with text in brackets must be included the report, but can be left blank.

* Text that is not in brackets in the template must match the template exactly, and be spelled identically, with the same spacing
	upper/lower case in the header does not impact upload, just spelling, punctuation, spacing.
	(for example, in DB reports, "Searches-federated and automated" must have no spaces before or after the dash.)
	
* Text with commas in it must have quotation marks around it, especially in .csv formatted files, or it will fail
	(for example, in BR3 (R4) reports, "Access Denied to Content Items by Month, Title and Category" must have quotes around it, but in BR3 (R1) reports, Turnaways by Month and Title does not)
	
* Numbers in the monthly columns must not display with quotation marks around them, or thousands separators ("1,000"  instead of 1000) when viewed in a text editor - this will cause those numbers to be perceived as text and the report will fail.

* For information about the actual standard for the report, go to the Project Counter site: 
Project Counter website for Codes of Practice: http://www.projectcounter.org/code_practice.html 
-	Code of Practice Release 4: http://www.projectcounter.org/r4/COPR4.pdf 
-	Code of Practice Release 3: http://www.projectcounter.org/r3/Release3D9.pdf 
-	Code of Practice Release 1 (for BR1, BR2 and BR3 only): http://www.projectcounter.org/cop/books/cop_books_ref.pdf


Acceptable Date and number formats in Counter report headers for upload:

"Period covered by Report:"
yyyy-mm-dd to yyyy-mm-dd
- European or APAC style dates (with day preceding month) will be mis-read or will cause the report to fail
- dates must be represented as numbers, no alpha characters, i.e. 2014-12-31 


"Date Run:"
These must be described in all numbers; alpha month names will fail in this field.
European or APAC style dates do not work, dates only work with numbers - 2014-01-01 or 01/01/2014
mm/dd/yyyy
yyyy-mm-dd

Months in the header:  
Months are alpha only, months described in numbers will fail in these fields.
Month must reflect english spelling only: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
month is first three letters of the month name - "Jan" or "jan"
Note that the mmm-yy and mmm-yyyy formats are most successful for uploading Counter reports.
these are the only acceptable date formats for the month columns:
mmm-yy
mmm-yyyy
yy-mmm
yyyy-mmm

***
Unacceptable date formats: 

The unacceptable formats below will fail, causing either a "friendly error", a blank "data report page", or will consolidate with incorrect dates (1970 is a common result of badly formatted dates):

"Period covered by Report:"
Any dates that don't exactly match the format above will fail.

"Date Run:"
yy-mm-dd  (year must be all 4 numbers, no abbreviation)
dd/mm/yyyy
dd/mm/yy
mm/dd/yy
yyyy-dd-mm (will not fail, if the "dd" number is below 12, but will be incorrect)
yy-dd-mm


Months in the header line, monthly description headers:  
- months described as numbers will fail.

here are some commonly used month/year formatting that will cause the report to fail:

separated by space
mmm yy  
yy mmm

separated by / or \
yy/mmm or yy\mmm
mmm/yy  or mmm/yy

separated by _
mmm_yy  
yy_mmm
