dear all, i am a new XANES and ATHENA user. i didi N K-edge XANES of soil samples. while feeling very good with data import, deglitching, truncation, merging etc. i am insecure about parameters for normalization. in the attached project i did truncation of data before 395900 (it is milli-eV), because these seem to be invalid, and i set an E-shift of -900 sinc the beamline had -9.9 eV off compared to the N K-edge of N2 gas. in this way i should be right back on scale ? the i did set the pre-edge parameters manually at start of the curve, and around 397000 since non of the previously measured N standard substances had edge steps below this value. however, then i am insecure how to set the other parameters for normalization properly. depending on how i play with the parameters sometimes i get normalized spectra which look pretty reasonable, sometimes the curves disappear completely from the graphics window, and sometimes i get curves of a shape never senn in the literature. is there easily understandable advice for the setting of the normalization parameters available; or can anybody more experienced check my project and give me recommendations. thanks, peter Prof. Dr. Peter Leinweber Institute for Land Use Universitaet Rostock D-18051 Rostock Present address: Department of Soil Science University of Saskatchewan 51 Campus Drive SK S7N 5A8 Canada phone: 001-306-966-6866 fax: 001-306-966-6881