Ian, This would be a perfect example for why Larch exists With it, you can read this file, and even make sense of it, even if Ifeffit (and so by extension, current versions of Athena) cannot. With Larch (essentially, Python), it is as simple as: larch> data = loadtxt(open('citrate_003_log_0_calibrated')) larch> plot(data[:, 0], data[:, 1:].sum(axis=1)) That summing of all the columns past the first was a guess, and it seems to look like noisy Au L3 edge XAFS. (aside: I had to guess because your columns are not labeled, This is not an issue for reading the data in the program, but is an issue when communicating scientific data. Label your axis!). So one way of putting this might be: the issue has been fixed, you're just not using that solution. For energy calibration, it looks like you used a linear calibration: larch> raw= loadtxt(open('citrate_003_log_0'), skip_rows=1) larch> slope, offset = polyfit(raw[:, 0], data[:, 0], 1) larch> print slope, offset 0.819999635553 11383.8402969 which means you could have calibrated the raw data with larch> energy = 11383.84 + 0.82 * raw[:, 0] My point here is: Don't expect Athena to have a canned solution for every analysis operation and every kind of data you might want to use. Instead, expect these tools that help you do the tasks you need. Hope that helps, --Matt