# Why does a kibana lens pretend my fields have no data, when they clearly do? **URL:** \ **Category:** Kibana\ **Created:** [March 23, 2022, 11:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506 "2022-03-23T23:03:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gcanyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e8cbc/32.png) [@gcanyon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gcanyon)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2022, 11:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/1 "2022-03-23T23:03:58Z")
1. I click on kibana 2. I click on visualize 3. I click on Create visualization 4. I click on Lens 5. The left column, under "Individual fields" says: "Looks like you don't have any data. Try extending the time range" 6. I see that I am looking at the last 15 minutes of data -- I change this to a week and still see the issue. 7. The left column also says: "Use filter by type to show fields without data." 8. I click "Filter by type" and deselect "Only show fields with data" 9. A bunch of fields now display. I drag one into the central area, and it displays a bar chart, clearly based on the data in that field. Why would the interface act this way? Am I fundamentally misunderstanding what "without data" means? Is there a documentation page for this? ---
**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 12:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/2 "2022-03-24T00:28:51Z")
Hi @gcanyon Welcome to the community What version are you on? Have you made any changes in the Kibana advanced settings ? Did you select the correct index pattern? What kind of index is this logs metrics or custom? ---
**Author:** ![gcanyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e8cbc/32.png) [@gcanyon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gcanyon)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 12:34am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/3 "2022-03-24T00:34:24Z")
I once spent an hour trying to figure out what version I was on, because an example I found on the web didn't match. An hour later I gave up just trying to find the version number ☹ If you mean advanced settings at the install-elastic level, I didn't install it, so I don't know. In my web-instance of kibana I have changed no settings. I haven't selected any index pattern/data view as far as I know -- I literally followed the steps I described. I don't know what the kinds of indexes are. And thanks for the response. ---
**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 12:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/4 "2022-03-24T00:56:56Z")
Navigate Kibana -\> Stack Management will show the version. ![Screen Shot 2022-03-23 at 5.51.22 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/9/e/9ef8fa9efff068f714ee275d64463e51f55d94c4.png) Select Index Pattern in Lens ![Screen Shot 2022-03-23 at 5.52.55 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/4/a/4aa135723116d434026a533c3710de375058a96a.png) Try This ![Screen Shot 2022-03-23 at 5.54.49 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/d/6/d667e42c0508324f7dd15f6d5f2b02896a08f949.jpeg) Or Perhaps this > **[How-to Series: Kibana](https://www.elastic.co/videos/training-how-to-series-stack)** > > Explore Kibana, from building your first dashboard to creating data tables with Kibana Lens. Download Kibana or the complete Elastic Stack for free and start visualizing, analyzing, and exploring your data in minutes. Pr This > **[Getting Started with Kibana](https://www.elastic.co/webinars/getting-started-kibana)** > > Kibana is a window into the Elastic Stack and the user interface for the Elastic Search Platform. It allows you to visualize and explore data as well as manage and monitor the entire Elastic Stack. This webinar is perfect for users that are new to... Or you could add the sample data and try that..... ![Screen Shot 2022-03-23 at 5.57.38 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/d/b/db07e8025a68ae6d66e0da52b0a49790d81fced5.jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![gcanyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e8cbc/32.png) [@gcanyon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gcanyon)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 1:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/5 "2022-03-24T01:23:56Z")
7.8.0 Can I just ask: why would this be called "Stack Management" instead of "About Elasticsearch" like every other application since GUIs were invented? Sorry to be testy, but I really did spend an hour at one point just trying to get this one piece of information, and since something like 2/3rds of the results in google refer to the command line curl command, and 80% of the rest of the results point to the command console, and the commands given are forbidden for me, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I already had the index pattern selected -- which, is there a document that translates this for people with years of SQL experience? -- I'd love to know that "table" == "index pattern" -- assuming that even is true. I can't do any of the try this items because of the issue I described: no fields are available, because kibana thinks they're all empty: ![Screen Shot 2022-03-23 at 6.22.15 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/e/a/ea272e193d386897ff2d7f631bc00d89848f1d67.png) If I open "Filter by type" and deselect "Only show fields with data" then all my fields appear. And they _do_ have data -- from that point on I can drag them into the display and report on the data they very much _do_ contain. ---
**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 1:31am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/6 "2022-03-24T01:31:34Z")
So you're probably not going to like to hear this but 7.8 is pretty old and early in the Lens functionality. You can think of an index as a table if you like. It's a reasonable analogy. I don't know why you're seeing what you're seeing. I haven't looked at 7.8 in a long time but I do know that some of the field population etc there perhaps were some bugs back then. There is a concept of index patterns which Lens uses and there were some different ways they were generated and displayed back in 7.8. You could try going under stack management, index patterns and and find the index pattern you're using which you did not show me. Refresh the index pattern. Then go back to lens and do a full reload of the page shift refresh I think is the right way to think about it. Then see if you're seeing the same behavior ---
**Author:** ![gcanyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e8cbc/32.png) [@gcanyon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gcanyon)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 1:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/7 "2022-03-24T01:45:18Z")
Thanks for the reading material -- neither url can be reached right now, but I'm prepared to assume that's because of some firewall aspect of my office's network. I'll check again when I get home, hopefully with better results. I will say that it's frustrating that you and I are on seemingly the same major version, and your UI looks dramatically different than mine. The functionality is (pretty much?) the same, but seemingly arbitrary changes to the look and feel makes it more difficult to follow along. ---
**Author:** ![gcanyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e8cbc/32.png) [@gcanyon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gcanyon)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 1:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/8 "2022-03-24T01:52:09Z")
No worries about the version. I don't have index patterns under stack management. I have index management, which I don't have privs for. ---
**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/9 "2022-03-24T01:55:35Z")
So with the elastic Stack it is often said that each minor release is equal to most software vendors major releases. So your ~9 versions behind... And Lens is one of the most iterated on capabilities over that time frame It's become a major capability for the Kibana. In addition, over that time frame, there's been a significant improvements of how field and field types are loaded. Think of the schema. It's much more dynamic the loaded now whereas before it was statically loaded, It's possible your index pattern is out of date and thus it's not showing correctly in lens That was an old behavior I'm just the messenger 🙂 Further down under stack management should be index patterns That is not in the same place as index management. What is the name of the index pattern that you're using in Lens. ---
**Author:** ![Marta\_Bondyra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/marta_bondyra/32/102122_2.png) [@Marta\_Bondyra](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Marta_Bondyra)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 10:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/10 "2022-03-24T10:43:11Z")
Hi there, Lens-team member here. Stephen is right, you're likely running into this issue: [Lens showing empty field when there is data · Issue #89716 · elastic/kibana · GitHub](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/89716) So if you have no way of upgrading the Kibana version: as mentioned in the issue, even if the fields list is giving you wrong results, the whole app should still work correctly. Just use `empty fields` (that are not empty in your case) and drag them to create a visualization. It will be working fine. Sorry about it, this is a complex topic and we've improved a lot here over the versions. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2022, 10:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-does-a-kibana-lens-pretend-my-fields-have-no-data-when-they-clearly-do/300506/11 "2022-04-21T10:44:03Z")
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