**Have you checked out the frequently asked questions? https://mothur.org/wiki/Frequently_asked_questions**

To help us resolve issues quickly, please include the following:


* Please describe the expected behavior and the actual behavior. This is a detailed description of the error. The more specific you can be the easier it is for us to solve the problem. There is no detail too small or insignificant. 

* Please describe how to reproduce the issue. For example, the commands you ran within mothur as well as any outside program you used to format the data. 
  
 * Please tell us about your system. For example, the version of mothur, operating system details and hardware limitations. _"I am running version 1.39.5 on OSX 10.13.2 with 32G of RAM."_
   
**Additional information you are welcome to provide:**

* The log file - The log file includes important information for us about your hardware, version of mothur and release date. It also shows us the workflow and helps us spot simple errors. The log file helps us diagnose most issues quickly without the need for additional data.

* The input files use with the command causing the issue. If they are too large to attach often a small sample of the file is enough. To select the first 500 lines from a file you can use the head system command. ex. _head -n 500 yourInputFile > newFileNameForSampling_

