With the release of Prism 10, a new file format (with the .prism file extension) was released. This new file format is the default for all new files created in Prism 10, but there are a number of other file formats that have been used by Prism over the years in previous versions. This page provides information about the compatibility of different file formats used with different versions of the Prism application (including compatibility between Prism Windows and Prism Mac).
Compatibility Mode (using older file formats with Prism 10)
Prism 10 can open all files with the .pzf and .pzfx file extensions created in older versions of Prism. These file extensions were first used in Prism 4 and continued to be used all the way through Prism 9.
When opening one of these files in Prism 10, Prism will simply open your file in Compatibility Mode with no additional alerts or actions to take. You'll know that you're in Compatibility Mode as Prism will indicate this in the title bar of the Prism window.
The Compatibility Checker utility
While in Compatibility Mode, you will be able to access to all of the new Prism 10 features. Each time the file is saved, Prism will automatically run the Compatibility Checker. This utility will examine the contents of your file for the presence of any features or elements that are not compatible with the older file extension (.pzfx or .pzf) the file is currently using. If no incompatibilities are found, the file will save as you would expect. However, if any incompatibilities are detected, an alert will be displayed listing all detected incompatibilities as well as options for proceeding.
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This page provides the different types of compatibility issues, the options available for each, and all known compatibility issues. Briefly:
•If the file contains only minor compatibility issues, you can choose to either "Save in Old Prism (.pzfx/.pzf) Format" or "Save as Newer Prism (.prism) Format"
•If the file contains critical compatibility issues, you will only be able to choose "Save as Newer Prism (.prism) Format"
Note that the Compatibility Checker utility will also be used anytime the "Save As..." command is used to save a file in an older Prism format (regardless of what format the file being saved started as).
Opening even older Prism files (.pzm)
Prior to Prism 4, Prism used the .pzm file extension for its files. It is possible to open these files if you're running Prism on Windows, but it requires a few additional steps. Unfortunately, these files cannot be opened in Prism on Mac devices.
Feature limitations while in Compatibility Mode
While in compatibility mode, you'll have access to nearly every feature in Prism 10. The only exception to this may be encountered when opening a .pzf file that was not saved in the compact format and that used linked (hooked) analysis constants. The analysis constant linking feature was totally re-designed in Prism 10, and requires analyses to be re-calculated in order to generate this list of constants. When opening a .pzf file that isn't in the compact format, the analyses aren't re-calculated automatically. Thus, you won't be able to use link to analysis constants until the analyses in the file are recalculated. Note that any analysis constant already saved in the .pzf file will remain linked (nothing will be lost simply by opening the file), you merely can't add any more until the analyses in the file have been recalculated.
Cross platform (Win/Mac) compatibility
The Windows and Mac versions of Prism use the same file format, and you can go back and forth between Prism 10 Win and Mac without any special conversion.
Issues
•With older versions, there is one problem. If you pasted a WMF or EMF image (from another program) onto a Prism graph or layout using Prism Windows version 6 or earlier, that object will be replaced by a red object when you open the file with Prism Mac.
•If you use any of these nonstandard fonts (and perhaps others) with Prism 10 Mac, the symbol will appear as a box when you open the file in Prism 10 Windows: Cuneiform, Linear, Aegean, Miao, and Inscriptional.
Backward compatibility
Prism 10 can open all .PZF and .PXFX files created by most older versions of Prism. Any .PZF or .PZFX file created with Prism 4 or newer can be opened, and even .PZM files created by Prism versions 1 to 3 can be opened.
When opening one of these older file formats, Prism 10 will open the file in compatibility mode as described earlier on this page.
Forward compatibility
Any files created with versions of Prism 10 can be opened by other versions of Prism 10. For example, a file created in Prism 10.1.0 can be opened by Prism 10.0.0. In this case, it should be noted that some features introduced in the newer version of Prism may not be available or modifiable in the older version.
Files created by Prism 10 cannot be opened by Prism 9 or earlier. These older versions of Prism do not understand how to read the new .prism file format as this file format was created after these versions of Prism were released.
More details
Prism 10 is the first version of Prism to use the .prism file format. Earlier versions of Prism will not be able to open this kind of file. However, Prism 10 is capable of saving files in earlier formats such as .pzfx or .pzf. We have done extensive testing to make sure that the most recent version of Prism prior to Prism 10 can open .pzfx and .pzf files created by Prism 10. However, when saving a file in one of these older formats, Prism 10 will first perform a compatibility check using the utility described earlier on this page.
When opening a file created by Prism 10 in an older version of Prism, we try to ensure that the results are sensible even if the older version of Prism is lacking features used in the file. We have not extensively tested opening Prism 10 files in Prism older Prism versions. Many Prism files created with 10 will probably work ok, but this is not something we have tested.
Keep in mind that there are likely to be some changes when you open a file with an earlier version of Prism. Going back and forth between two versions is likely to be annoying.
The location of analysis results on analysis tables may change between versions
When you open a Prism file on a version different than the version it was created on, results 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. You may have to do a bit of clean up to make the files work as intended.
Compatibility of Prism objects saved within other documents
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. This only works if the version of Prism (or the GraphPad Prism Viewer) that is installed on your computer is the same version or newer than the version of Prism that was used to link or embed the object in the first place. If your version of Prism is older, it won't know how to open the linked/embedded object.
Special characters may change to question marks
Prism 8 introduced use of Unicode to encode all characters. This is how almost all programs work now.
When you open a file created with Prism 8 or newer in an earlier version of Prism some characters will still appear fine (Greek..). But others will show as a question mark in the earlier version. Three notes to help ensure that most characters appear fine:
•To properly open Prism files generated in new versions of Prism when using Prism 7, make sure you chose the appropriate locale for Prism 7. Other words, if a user enters Japanese and saves the file in a new version of Prism, then to properly open this file in Prism 7, the user will need to make sure that Japanese locale is set in the system.
•Make sure that you have updated Prism 7 to the last release, which does a better job with character conversion than did earlier releases. Use Help..Check for updates.
•In Prism 7 and older, symbols that don't have an ANSII equivalent will show as "?" no matter which locale is set.
