I see some of you took the bold route—jumping straight into the middle of the tutorial instead of starting from the beginning. And now… you’ve landed in the troubleshooting section. No judgment here! You gave it a shot, and that’s what counts. Let’s tackle this together and get things back on track! 
Here’s a common issue you might run into when working with your dataset:
Yep, this error usually means that the sample names in your sample_table and otu_table don’t match. Before panicking, double-check the following:
The rownames of sample_table actually contain sample names.
The colnames of otu_table also contain sample names.
There are no hidden formatting issues—for example, make sure you’re not using a .csv file instead of a .tsv for the metadata.
A small detail can throw everything off, so let’s double-check and get things back on track!
Take a look at the image below—do you see what I mean? It can get tricky when you’re trying to read a TSV file but accidentally set the path to a CSV. The confusion between comma and tab separation can really mess things up, even after you convert it to a data frame.
