Default preferences

Prism Preferences

Use this dialog to set Prism's defaults for various settings.

Note that a few settings are also made elsewhere. The import (paste special) dialog, the export graph, and the diagnostics tab of nonlinear regression, for example, all have check-boxes to make the current settings default for the future.

To open the Preferences dialog:

Click on the Prism button in the toolbar and choose Preferences.

This will open the Preferences dialog.

View tab

•	Set the default fonts for data tables, results sheets, Info sheets, and floating notes

•	Set the default measurement unit: cm or inches

•	Set Zoom defaults

•	Set when to show Data and Results folder

File and Printer tab

•	Set automatic backup default times

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Prism 5 has an option to save files in compact format. All this format does is leave out analysis results (and instead recomputes them). Zipping the file with standard zipping software can do a much better job of compression. You also can select an XML Prism format called PZFX as the default for saving all your Prism files. This is an XML format that can be opened only by Prism 5 (and not Prism 4). The first part of the file contains all the data tables and info sheets in a plain-text XML format that can be viewed by other programs. This makes the PZFX format a bit more useful for backups.

•	Set printing option defaults

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Choose default way Prism copies files to clipboard -- EMF, WMF, or both. Changing this setting can help problems in copying and pasting graphs to other applications. Note that when you copy and paste between Prism and Microsoft Office applications like PowerPoint and Word, you may get better results using EMF or WMF. There's really no way to predict which will work better. If you're having problems, try setting another format as the default choice for copying and pasting.

Graph tab

•	Set defaults for axes, error bars, symbols and lines, color schemes, and graph and data table fonts.

Analysis tab

•	Set defaults for linear regression, nonlinear regression weighting, and whether or not to create new graphs from transforms, normalizations, pruning, baseline removal, etc.

Internet tab

•	Set default FTP connections logins and settings.

Info Sheet tab

•	Set default headings to include on new Info Sheets.

File locations tab

•	Set default locations for saving files, backups, templates, scripts, etc. Choose to set specific directories or recently used locations.

Send to MS Office tab

•	Set default formatting options when sending a file to Word. Also select default for linking and embedding options for sending Prism objects to Office applications.

•	Note that when sending files to PowerPoint and Word, some combinations of operating system and Office version tend to like one format over another.