The best way to get started is to watch the ten minute movie. It is a concise explanation of how to use Prism.

The written tour includes more details than the movie, with lots of screen shots. Print the tour so you can follow along in Prism as you read it.

Also consider arranging on-site training.

For each of the five kinds of tables, Prism lets you choose from several sample data sets.

By choosing sample data, you not only avoid the need to enter data, you will also see a floating note that explains how the data are arranged and gives suggestions for graphing and analyzing. These floating notes also include links to appropriate topics in the help file.

Take advantage of these sample data sets, and you'll master Prism quickly.

Spending a few minutes reading about the various approaches to making bar graphs will prevent some aggravation later. This diagram summarizes the difference between Column and Grouped bar graphs.

Column bar graph

Grouped bar graph

Once you've made some graphs with Prism, you'll probably want to make similar graphs. Don't start again from scratch. Instead clone from an existing graph, a choice on the Welcome and New Table & Graph dialogs. Choose a graph to clone, enter new data, and you are done.

When you create a new data table, choose between a XY, Column, Grouped, Contingency, and Survival table. Understanding how these tables are used will  make it much easier to use Prism effectively.

Click on the Data Table, Info, Results, Graphs or Layouts folder name in the Navigator to open the Gallery. Or click the Gallery button on the bottom toolbar.

The gallery shows all sheets in a section. Double click on the one you want to go to. Or select several sheets to work on at once.

Open the Family folder to see all sheets linked to the current one. Or click the Link button in the bottom toolbar to jump to one of those linked sheets.

Open the Data with Results folder to trace an analysis chain (when the result of one analysis is the input to another).

Click the ping-pong button in the bottom toolbar to go to the previously viewed sheet. Click again to return.

Click the highlight button, and the sheet name will appear highlighted in the navigator and gallery.

Annotate any sheet with a floating note, then find all annotated sheets in a  special folder at the bottom of the Navigator.

Right click on any symbol or bar, and you can change its appearance, apart from other symbols or bars in the same data set.

Select one (or several graphs), click the Magic (Make Graphs Consistent) button, choose an example graph, and all your graphs will be changed at once.

Rather than change colors of every graph element separately, use color schemes. You can use ones we provide, or create your own.

Prism can plot error bars directly from raw data. Prism lets you enter SD or SEM if you have calculated them elsewhere, but there is no need to do so. Enter your raw data, and let Prism do the rest. Prism offers analyses that perform row and column descriptive statistics, but these are only to help you understand the data. You do not need to run these analyses to plot error bars.

After you drop the data or results table onto the graph, a dialog will pop up where you can choose which data sets to include and which axis to plot those data on (right or left).

If you made a mistake, or want to try different analysis choices, you can always return to the analysis parameter dialogs. Don't repeat the analysis unless you want two copies of the results. To open the analysis parameters dialog, click the analysis parameters in the upper left corner of any results sheet or in the toolbar.

Click Learn from any Analyze dialog to learn more about the analysis. Our help goes beyond program help, and explains the principles behind the analysis.

Once you've finished any analysis, click the Analysis Checklist button in the toolbar to make sure you are interpreting the results correctly.

Select any block of tabular results, copy to the clipboard, and paste onto any graph or layout. This will be a live link. If you change the data, or the analysis choices, the embedded results table will update.

Many analyses (i. e. Transform) create results tables that can be used as a data table. These results tables have green grids, unlike tables with red grids that contain tabulations of results that cannot be graphed. From any results table with a green grid, click Analyze to analyze the results. You can make the analysis chain as long as you want. For example, you could Transform, then Normalize, then fit with Nonlinear regression, then transform the residuals from the regression.

Click one button and you are done. No need to copy and paste, or export and import.

By default Prism copies graphs to the clipboard in both (Windows Metafile) and EMF (Enhanced metafile) format. and lets the pasting program decide which one to use. You can tell Prism to only copy one format (File & Printer tab of the preferences dialog). If graphs pasted into other programs don't look right, try all these settings.

Prism offers a variety of formats. When possible, choose formats that include information about vectors and fonts (WMF, EMF, PICT, EPS, PDF) over formats that only describe bitmaps (TIF, JPG, PNG).

Anyone can view the complete Prism file, including analysis choices, using the free Prism Viewer (which never expires).

You aren't stuck with the sheet names that Prism assigns, or their order. Rename or reorder your data tables (and graphs...). When you rename data tables, linked analyses and graphs are automatically renamed. Delete sheets you no longer need.

You'll see the yellow highlighting in both the navigator and gallery.

Click the push-pin icon to add a color-coded floating note to any sheet.

Info sheets contain both structured information (lot numbers, page numbers,....) and unstructured notes. Each info sheet can be linked to a particular data table.

Some people make the mistake of starting a new project for every data table, not realizing that a Prism project (file) can have any number of data tables, analyses and graphs. You can keep an entire project in one file.

Don't define 'project' too broadly, because a huge project can be hard to navigate. You can always merge projects later, or include a graph from one project in a layout of another.