File compatibility between Prism versions

Prism 4 (but not earlier versions) can open .PZF (but not .PZFX) files created by Prism 5, but be careful. If you open a Prism 5 PZF file in Prism 4, new Prism 5 features will be lost, so graphs may look a bit different. Results also may appear on different rows of the results tables. This means that results tables embedded on graphs may no longer show the results you care about, and scripts may export the wrong values.

The Windows and Mac versions of Prism use the same file format, and you can go back and forth without any special conversion.

Some Mac email programs automatically encode or compress attached files without adding a file extension. If you use Windows and receive a file from a colleague’s Macintosh that you can’t open, try “unstuffing” the file using the program StuffIt Expander (free from www.stuffit.com). That program does more than reverse “stuffing” (compression) – it also decodes files stored in MacBinary or BinHex formats. You don’t have to know how (or even whether) the file was encoded or compressed – StuffIt expander just figures it out.

On Windows (but not Mac), when you paste a Prism graph or layout within Word or PowerPoint (or some other programs), you can paste just a picture, paste a link, or embed a Prism object. If you paste a link or embed an object, you can then double click on that image to edit within Prism (Link to OLE help page). This works only if the correct version of Prism (or the free Viewer) is installed. If a Prism 5 object is embedded within a Word document, for example, double-clicking to edit that object will only work if Prism 5 (or later) is installed on that computer. Double-clicking on a Prism 4 object will open Prism 4 if it is present on that computer, or Prism 5 if Prism 4 is not present.