Sierra Chart footprint chart not showing data: a symptom-first troubleshooting guide

Why your footprint is blank or incomplete

When a Sierra Chart footprint chart is not showing data, the cause is usually one of four things. The data feed is not delivering trades. Intraday storage is not recording at 1 tick. Your data service has no historical bid ask data for the period you loaded. Or the Numbers Bars study is hiding values that do exist.

The quickest fix is to identify which part of the chart is empty: all of it, only history, only live bars, or only some cells. Then check the matching cause before you reload anything. Reloading at the wrong moment can make you think the problem is solved when it is not.

This guide is a triage routine. For background on why per-trade granularity matters, see Sierra Chart footprint tick data requirements.

Start with the symptom, not the settings

Before you open any dialog, scroll the chart and note exactly what is missing.

The split between "history blank, live fine" and "everything blank" decides most cases. If live bars fill in correctly, the study and connection are working and the problem is the stored history.

Step 1: confirm trades are actually arriving

Open a Time and Sales window or watch the last price on the chart for ES or NQ during regular trading hours. If the price is not updating, the footprint cannot build. Check these points:

• The data feed is connected and your subscription covers the exchange. CME data for ES, NQ and CL requires the matching market data entitlement.
• The symbol matches a contract your service carries. A typo in the contract month gives you an empty chart, not an error you will notice.
• The market is open. On a weekend you will only see stored history, so live behavior cannot be tested.

If the chart has no candles at all, the issue sits at the chartbook or symbol level rather than in the footprint. Sierra Chart chartbook not displaying correctly covers that case.

Step 2: check intraday storage

Footprint cells need each trade with its price and its bid or ask side. Sierra Chart only keeps that detail when intraday data is stored tick by tick. Go to Global Settings >> Data/Trade Service Settings and confirm that Intraday Data Storage Time Unit is set to 1 tick. The tick by tick data configuration documentation explains this requirement.

The key detail is what happens to data you already have. Changing the setting affects how data is stored from then on. Bars stored earlier at a coarser unit, such as 1 second or 1 minute, do not gain per-trade detail by themselves. That is why many traders change the setting, see live bars fill correctly, and still have blank history. To rebuild history at tick granularity, the existing intraday data for that symbol has to be removed and downloaded again from the service. Sierra Chart has commands for deleting and re-downloading chart data. Check the menus in your version for the exact label, and read the documentation section above before deleting anything.

Step 3: check historical bid ask data availability

Even with storage at 1 tick, history can only be as deep as your data service provides. Services differ in how many days of tick history they deliver, and some deliver less for certain exchanges. If your footprint is full for the last few sessions and empty before that, you have probably reached the limit of the service's tick history, not a broken setting.

What to check:

• Your data service's documentation on historical tick depth for CME futures.
• The Days to Load value in Chart >> Chart Settings. If it asks for more days than tick history exists, older bars may show price but no bid ask breakdown. The Chart Settings documentation describes the loading options.
• The contract. After a roll, a chart on the new front month for ES has only that contract's history. Before roll week, the new contract traded lightly, so early bars look thin even when nothing is wrong.

For EURUSD or other spot forex symbols, check what your feed actually delivers. Spot forex has no central exchange, so many feeds do not provide true traded volume split by bid and ask. Footprint cells may be empty or show something that is not comparable to CME futures. If you mainly see a bid ask split problem on otherwise filled cells, Sierra Chart footprint missing bid ask volume goes deeper on that symptom.

Step 4: Numbers Bars troubleshooting

If live data arrives and history is stored at 1 tick, the remaining suspect is the study itself. Footprints in Sierra Chart are built with the Numbers Bars study. Market Depth settings do not create them. Open the chart's study list and confirm Numbers Bars is present and enabled. The Numbers Bars documentation lists every input. Check these in order:

1. Bar spacing and zoom. When bars are too narrow, the text does not fit and cells look empty. Widen the bar spacing or zoom in on a few bars and see if numbers appear.
2. Font size and colors. A text color that matches the background, or a font too large for the row height, hides values. Temporarily set a high-contrast text color to test.
3. Row size versus tick size. ES and NQ move in 0.25 increments and CL in 0.01. If each row covers several ticks, cells are grouped and some prices will not get their own row. That is aggregation, not missing data.
4. Filter or threshold inputs. Any input that hides values below a minimum volume will leave low-volume cells blank by design. Set it to zero while testing.
5. Which values are displayed. Make sure the study is set to show the bid and ask values you expect, not a single column that is blank because its source is not available.

If your chart was built from someone else's file, the study may also depend on a chart setting you changed. Comparing against a known-good layout saves time. A ready-made Sierra Chart footprint chartbook gives you a working Numbers Bars reference to compare inputs against when you are not sure which change broke your display.

Step 5: understand reload behavior

A reload or recalculation, available from the Chart menu, rebuilds the chart and its studies from the data already stored on your computer. It is useful after changing study inputs or chart settings. It does not create tick detail that was never stored. So the sequence matters:

• Change study or display inputs, then recalculate. Display problems should clear immediately.
• Change Intraday Data Storage Time Unit, then re-download history for the symbol. Recalculating alone will not fill old bars.
• After a re-download, give the download time to finish before judging the result. A chart checked halfway through can look partially blank.

If blank cells come back after you reopen the chartbook, check that you saved the chartbook (.Cht) after fixing the study. Also check that the study collection you reapply carries the corrected inputs. Study collections use the .stdycllct extension.

A worked triage example on ES

Say an ES footprint shows full cells for today's session, but yesterday's bars show only candles. Today's live data proves the connection and the Numbers Bars study work. That points to stored history. Open Global Settings >> Data/Trade Service Settings. If the storage unit is now 1 tick but was changed recently, yesterday was likely stored at a coarser unit. Re-download that symbol's history. If the cells are still blank after the download completes, check how many days of tick history your service provides. Only then look at Days to Load.

The same order works for NQ and CL. Always confirm live first, history second and display last.

Conclusion

A footprint that is not showing data is rarely a mystery once you name the symptom. Everything blank points to the connection or symbol. History blank with live working points to intraday storage or the service's historical bid ask data. Scattered blank cells point to Numbers Bars display inputs. Reload only after you know which of these you fixed. If you want a footprint layout that already opens with working Numbers Bars settings, SierraOnShop offers ready-to-use Sierra Chart chartbooks for footprint, DOM and market profile.

FAQ

Can I fix blank footprint history without losing my chartbook layout?

Yes. Re-downloading intraday data affects stored price data for the symbol, not the chartbook file. Save the .Cht file first so your study settings and window layout stay intact.

Why does my footprint work on ES but not on a forex symbol?

Futures like ES come from a central exchange that reports each trade. Many spot forex feeds do not provide traded volume split by bid and ask, so the footprint has little or nothing to place in cells.

Does replay mode help diagnose missing cells?

Replay uses the data stored for that symbol. If replay shows the same blank bars, the gap is in stored data, not in the live connection.

Should I load fewer days to make the footprint load faster?

Loading fewer days reduces the work the chart does at open. It will not fix missing data, but it can make testing settings quicker while you troubleshoot.