Once you have completed a Form 3, 4 or 5 and submitted a test filing (please see the video for  How to Create and File a Form 3, 4 or 5 to the SEC) you will receive the results of the test filing in a pop up on the site and also an email to the SEC EDGAR contact on your account. 

In this video, we will teach you how to troubleshoot test filing errors using the line numbers on the filing results.

The test results will reference the line number where the error is located.  To determine where the error is, you will need to download a web design software that can view web code such as Visual Studio or Dreamweaver that can read the XML file with numerical rows.

To download Visual Studio’s free software, go to the download link on the screen and in the video description https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/.  Once there, click the Download Visual Studio button.

The XML file can be found in the “Submission” tab in the form.  Click the Export XML button.

It will download to the “Downloads” file on your computer.  Save the file in a location where you can access it later.  

Navigate to the location where you’ve saved the XML file and right click on the file.  Select open with and then select Visual Studio Code.  That will then show the line numbers.  Using the line numbers, you can identify where the error is in the Form 4 in order to correct the error.  Typically, the errors are in the footnotes.  For instance, the system does not like fractions.  You will need to change 7½% to 7 1/2 % or 7.5% (note that the fraction isn’t condensed into one character field, rather spread over 3 character fields).