# why are there so many missing values for PUMA? **URL:** \ **Category:** USA\ **Created:** [March 15, 2017, 6:47pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-are-there-so-many-missing-values-for-puma/1648 "2017-03-15T18:47:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mshackel2583](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@mshackel2583](https://forum.ipums.org/u/mshackel2583)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 6:47pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-are-there-so-many-missing-values-for-puma/1648/1 "2017-03-15T18:47:00Z")
I’m using ACS extracts from 2005 to 2015 (as well as the 2000 5%) for only California. Only 324 of my over 1 million observations contain a value for PUMA. Does anyone know why this is or if there’s anything I can do? ---
**Author:** ![JeffBloem](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/jeffbloem/32/40_2.png) [@JeffBloem](https://forum.ipums.org/u/JeffBloem)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 7:22pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-are-there-so-many-missing-values-for-puma/1648/2 "2017-03-15T19:22:00Z")
It looks like something is going wrong in the download process. I just looked at your most recent data extract and found that everything seems to be operating correctly. Specifically, each record has a value for PUMA. Typically with issues like this the file is somehow being corrupted during decompression. I’m not sure what the default decompression software is on your computer, but we recommend using [7-zip](http://www.7-zip.org/). ---
**Author:** ![mshackel2583](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@mshackel2583](https://forum.ipums.org/u/mshackel2583)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 9:55pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-are-there-so-many-missing-values-for-puma/1648/3 "2017-03-15T21:55:00Z")
Thank you so much, I re-did it using 7-zip and everything was fine.