How to Write a Problem Report

Before sending a bug report, please read the guidelines on writing a problem report.

If you follow these, your bug report has a much higher chance of being processed promptly.

We find two recommendations on the point to be very useful.

Wolfram Research, Inc. recommends:


Please describe only one problem per report. Useful reports include:


To write an effective description of the problem, you should:

It is much better to give too much detail than to say too little.


Christopher Creutzig of SciFace Software GmbH recommends

Why You Should Read This

Simply put, the more effectively you report a bug, the more likely an engineer will actually fix it. These bug writing guidelines are an attempt at a general tutorial on riting effective bug reports. You may have to deviate from it at places, but you should always know why.

How to Write a Useful Bug Report

Useful bug reports are ones that get bugs fixed. A useful bug report normally has two qualities:

Reproducible. If an engineer can't see it or conclusively prove that it exists, the engineer will probably stamp it "WORKSFORME" or "INVALID", and move on to the next bug. Every detail you can provide helps.

Specific. The quicker the engineer can isolate the issue to a specific problem, the more likely it'll be expediently fixed. (If a programmer or tester has to decipher a bug, they spend more time cursing the submitter than fixing or testing the problem.)

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