# ERROR LSMatFormat file

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-lsmatformat-file/13536
**Category:** Technical Support
**Created:** [February 7, 2020, 8:33pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-lsmatformat-file/13536 "2020-02-07T20:33:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/nicholas_bokulich/32/19937_2.png) [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2020, 5:24pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-lsmatformat-file/13536/2 "2020-02-10T17:24:23Z")

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Hi @manojndsu,  
This error is occurring because the file you are attempting to import is NOT a distance matrix, nor is it LSMatFormat. It is an "OTU Table". I have already recommended that you read the importing tutorial at [qiime2.org](http://qiime2.org) to learn more about how to import various data types into QIIME 2. In your case, you will want to follow the instructions shown here to first convert your OTU table to biom-format before importing to QIIME 2:

> [@error when running 'biom convert'](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-when-running-biom-convert/13547/7):
>
> Hi again The same commands I wrote earlier worked biom convert -i otu\_table.biom -o otu\_table.tsv --to-tsv [otu\_table.tsv](https://forum.qiime2.org/uploads/short-url/bXGmcOb6hR8TsjvSD01wmGfQRve.tsv) (75.8 KB) If you are going to convert a .tsv back to .biom: biom convert -i feature-table.tsv -o feature-table.biom --table-type="OTU table" --to-hdf5 And if you want to import a .biom to Qiime2: qiime tools import \ --input-path feature-table.biom \ --type 'FeatureTable[Frequency]' \ --input-format BIOMV210Format \ --output-path table.qza

Good luck!

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