Maxquant msms.txt read problem

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Maxquant msms.txt read problem myngaf  2023-05-30 04:52
 

I am new to using Maxquant and Skyline for MS data analysis.
I have kept the Maxquant setting as default and tried to build the library using the msms.txt file.
The combined folder, mqpar file are all kept in the same place after the Maxquant run finished.
However, when reading the msms.txt, skyline showed the error attached, indicating that there is an error in finding the "Raw File" column in the msms.txt.
Does that mean that skyline could not find some key files because the directory might be wrong or the files are misplaced?
How might I solve the issue?
Thank you for helping!

 
 
Nick Shulman responded:  2023-05-30 09:56
Can you send us the file "msms.txt"?
The first line of that text file typically has several column names beginning with "Raw file".
If you are getting an error saying that "Raw file" cannot be found, it might mean that none of the expected column names cannot be found in that file, or it might mean that some other text has been inserted at the beginning of the file which is confusing BiblioSpec.

If "msms.txt" is less than 50MB you can attach it to this support request.
You can upload larger files here:
https://skyline.ms/files.url

-- Nick
 
myngaf responded:  2023-05-30 12:06
Thank you for the quick response!
Attached is the msms.txt file.
By the file cannot be found, does that mean the .d raw data is missing or misplaced?
Thank you for helping to check!
 
Nick Shulman responded:  2023-05-30 12:30
Try using the "msms.txt" file that I have attached here instead.

This new file is almost the same as the file that you attached, except that I have removed the UTF-8 byte order mark from the beginning of the file.
(That is, I opened up the file in Notepad++ and I used the menu item "Encoding > UTF-8" to change the encoding from the "UTF-8-BOM" which was originally selected, and then I saved the file)

The error that you were getting was not saying that it could not find a particular file. The error was saying that it was not able to find the words "Raw File" at the beginning of the file. The reason for this is that your text file began with some special characters which are supposed to indicate the format of the text file, but which look like garbage characters since the MaxQuant reader in BiblioSpec does not understand that.

Do you have any idea why your msms.txt file might have had that byte order mark at the beginning of it? Did you open the file in a text editor and save it, perhaps inadvertently changing the format in the process? If it turns out that newer versions of MaxQuant are always putting the byte order mark there, then we will need to fix our MaxQuant reader so that it does not choke on this.
-- Nick
 
myngaf responded:  2023-05-31 00:17
Thank you for the help! The file now runs smoothly.
The MaxQuant version used to generate this msms.txt should be the latest version (v2.4.2.0.) as of the time of writing (31 May 2023).
I have tried to run MaxQuant v2.2.0.0. using the same .d file, and checked some older .txt generated using older versions of MaxQuant, and the format seems to stay at UTF-8.
It might be possible that the update has changed the output file format.
Again, thanks for helping!