When running makeOrgPackageFromNCBI from AnnotationForge, I received an error message saying 'Unexpected format to the list of available marts'. I browsed to the provided URL and find a page that starts with '<martregistry>' with more information below:

<martregistry> <marturllocation database="ensembl_mart_99" default="1" displayname="Ensembl Genes 99" host="www.ensembl.org" includedatasets="" martuser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_ENSEMBL" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" servervirtualschema="default" visible="1"/> <marturllocation database="mouse_mart_99" default="" displayname="Mouse strains 99" host="www.ensembl.org" includedatasets="" martuser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_MOUSE" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" servervirtualschema="default" visible="1"/> <marturllocation database="sequence_mart_99" default="" displayname="Sequence" host="www.ensembl.org" includedatasets="" martuser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_SEQUENCE" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" servervirtualschema="default" visible=""/> <marturllocation database="ontology_mart_99" default="" displayname="Ontology" host="www.ensembl.org" includedatasets="" martuser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_ONTOLOGY" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" servervirtualschema="default" visible=""/> <marturllocation database="genomic_features_mart_99" default="" displayname="Genomic features 99" host="www.ensembl.org" includedatasets="" martuser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_GENOMIC" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" servervirtualschema="default" visible=""/> <marturllocation database="snp_mart_99" default="" displayname="Ensembl Variation 99" host="www.ensembl.org" includedatasets="" martuser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_SNP" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" servervirtualschema="default" visible="1"/> <marturllocation database="regulation_mart_99" default="" displayname="Ensembl Regulation 99" host="www.ensembl.org" includedatasets="" martuser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_FUNCGEN" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" servervirtualschema="default" visible="1"/> </martregistry>

Can anyone help? Thank you!

This error comes from the biomaRt package, which is being used by makeOrgPackageFromNCBI()

The error normally comes if something is wrong with the Ensembl server and you end up at an error or redirection web page. Ensembl are currently moving to a new data centre (http://www.ensembl.info/2020/02/18/reduced-functionality-16th-25th-march-2020/) so it maybe that the resource was unavailable for a while. However what you're showing is the format it's looking for, so hopefully this was just a temporary glitch and it will work if you try running it again.