# Error in command for generating PCoA plot

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-in-command-for-generating-pcoa-plot/1251
**Category:** User Support
**Tags:** pending-development, metadata
**Created:** [September 15, 2017, 5:06pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-in-command-for-generating-pcoa-plot/1251 "2017-09-15T17:06:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 11

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![thermokarst](https://forum.qiime2.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/8e7dd6/32.png) [@thermokarst](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/thermokarst)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2017, 1:04pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-in-command-for-generating-pcoa-plot/1251/11 "2017-09-21T13:04:03Z")

</div>

> [@Lisa\_Crummett](#):
>
> I went back and checked the instructions and the screen shots show Qiime2 Core - 2.0.6

A few screenshots do show that, but there is also a note in the docs, copied here:

> Note, the list of installed plugins (and their versions) will likely differ depending on the version of the VirtualBox virtual machine that you chose to download and install.

This is so that we don't need to recreate screenshots with every release!

> [@Lisa\_Crummett](#):
>
> Is it possible that Qiime 2 2017.8 was not made available for virtual box download only native dowload?

No, I don't think it was possible, we [announced the VirtualBox build](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/qiime-2-2017-8-release-is-now-live/967/25) within a day of the main release announcement.

Do you see a page that looks like this when you click on the "VirtualBox Images download link" in the [VirtualBox Install Doc](https://docs.qiime2.org/2017.8/install/virtual/virtualbox/)?

 ![34 AM](https://forum-qiime2-org.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/1X/b07f3e5274264fe27848fea7c12242a39e40ad28.png)

The [https://data.qiime2.org/distro/core/2017.8](https://data.qiime2.org/distro/core/2017.8) is the one for the current release (although at this point you might want to wait until the end of next week to upgrade - QIIME 2017.9 is due out next week).

> [@Lisa\_Crummett](#):
>
> Can you explain why it doesn’t look like a tab delimited file?

Yep, sorry I wasn't clear! There are no tabs in that sample you posted - only spaces, which is why I thought it didn't look like a tab-delimited file.

> [@Lisa\_Crummett](#):
>
> I didn’t cut and paste anything

Sorry, I was talking about copy-and-pasting the contents of your metadata file into the Forum, as opposed to attaching your metadata file to your Forum reply --- what I was getting at here is by pasting that snippet of your metadata into the Forum, some of the formatting might have been lost.

> [@thermokarst](#):
>
> can you try re-exporting to TSV (tab-separated) and try again?

Apologies if I missed this in your reply, but were you able to try this? If so and you are still seeing the error, then upgrading to the latest version of QIIME 2 will be the next step here (quite a bit of the Metadata code has changed since 2017.6).

Thanks!

---

_[View the full topic](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-in-command-for-generating-pcoa-plot/1251)._