There are two possible meanings of the term "equation editor" in Prism. One meaning would be to enter or edit a user-defined equation for use in nonlinear regression. The other meaning would be to annotate your graphs with a visual representation (image) of a custom equation. This page refers to the second use of "equation editor", and provides some methods that can be used to add these kinds of custom equations to your graphs or layouts in Prism.

Prism doesn't currently offer any built-in tools for users to write custom equations (for example, using a TeX editor). While we may include this functionality in a future version of the software, we suggest using 3rd party tools to achieve this functionality in existing versions of Prism. This page provides details on some ways that this can be done.

In older versions of Prism, inserting equations was much easier and used Microsoft Equation Editor. However, this functionality was removed by Microsoft, and trying to use this feature in Prism results in an error message. More information on that is also provided on this page.

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Adding equations to graphs or layouts

There are a couple of solutions available depending on your operating system. The sections below provide details on some of the methods that can still be used to add equations to your Prism graphs or layouts.

Windows

Adding equations from Microsoft Office 365

Starting with Prism 8 we did a huge amount of work to make Prism 8 and future versions work with Unicode, so Prism will work just fine with equations copied from MS Office. 

To add equations to Prism starting from version 8 - do the following:

1. Open MS PowerPoint and create an equation using the Insert > Equation command from the main toolbar.

2. After you have inserted the equation in the MS PowerPoint slide, copy it to the Prism graph or layout using the standard Clipboard main menu command Edit > Copy (Control-C) in MS PowerPoint and Edit > Paste (Control-V) in Prism.

As a result, you will get a vector-based equation on your Prism graph or layout. Because the equation image is vector based, you can scale it up or down to the desired size without affecting image quality.

It is also possible to do so in MS Excel and MS Word. However, please note, when you copy an equation or any other text from MS Word - it will also paste an extra space around the equation. The squares on the screenshot below display how the equation is pasted.

Cropping the image after pasting it into Prism can be performed to remove extra unwanted space. To do this, right-click on the pasted picture, select Format Picture, and use a Crop section to edit the image to the needed size. Find more details on cropping images here.

You may find more details on inserting and writing new and editing existing equations in MS Office here.

For Prism 7 - It used to be possible to create an equation in Word, copy it, and paste it into Prism. That no longer works. We are not sure when it stopped working. It appears that the problem is that the equation object uses Unicode, which Prism 7 does not support.

Adding equations using MathType

As discussed below, inserting equations used to be possible with Microsoft Equation Editor. In reality, Microsoft Equation was a light version of MathType. Now, MathType has become a separate tool. Although Microsoft Equation Editor no longer works, with MathType installed, the "Insert a new equation" toolbar button in Prism allows adding equations on a graph.

The MathType demo is good for 30 days. After 30 days MathType demo becomes a read-only version. Adding and editing existing equations added via MathType will not be possible.

The way to add an equation in Prism using MathType is to click the ‘Update GraphPad Prism’ item from the ‘File’ menu in the MathType app.

Here is how:

Double-clicking any equation already added to a graph or layout will open MathType for editing. Updating these equations in Prism can be done in two ways:

1. Open the 'File' menu of MathType and select ‘Update GraphPad Prism’. Alternatively, use the Ctrl+S shortcut on your keyboard. Then close the MathType window
   
2. After editing the equation in the MathType window, close the MathType window. A dialog will appear that says "Save changes to Equation in GraphPad Prism?". Click "Yes".
   

No longer available: Microsoft Equation Editor

Inserting equations into Prism used to be easy using the Microsoft Equation editor. But then Microsoft changed things:

Message: "In order for this command to work, Microsoft Equation must be installed."

An update to Office in January 2018 removes Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 (or 3.1) without asking. Microsoft was concerned about security holes in the Equation editor, was unable to fix it, so decided to remove it. If you double-click on any equation made in Prism, Prism will try to find the equation editor, and when it cannot find it will show you the message: "In order for this command to work, Microsoft Equation must be installed".

Mac

Adding equations using Apple Pages

To add equations:

1. Open Pages. Make sure that you are not in text editing mode. For this - click on the empty upper part of the page (if done correctly, you should see the message “Nothing selected” on the Format panel. If you do not perform this step, the equation will be inserted in Pages as text and will not copy to Prism correctly)

2. Go to the Insert > Equation command and compose the desired equation in the Pages equation dialog using LaTeX commands or MathML elements. When finished editing the equation, click the "Insert" button

3. After you have the equation ready and inserted into the Pages document - copy it to the Prism graph or layout using the standard Clipboard main menu command Edit > Copy (Command-C) in MS PowerPoint and Edit > Paste (Command-V) in Prism.

As a result, you will get a vector-based equation on your Prism graph or layout. Because the equation image is vector based, you can scale it up or down to the desired size without affecting image quality.

You may find more details on adding equations in Pages from this article: Add mathematical equations in Pages on Mac

Adding equations using Microsoft Office

To add equations:

1. Open MS PowerPoint or MS Excel and create an equation using the Insert > Equation command from the main toolbar.

2. After you have inserted the equation in the MS PowerPoint slide or Excel sheet - copy it to the Prism graph or layout using the standard Clipboard main menu command Edit > Copy (Command-C) in MS PowerPoint or MS Excel and Edit > Paste (Command-V) in Prism.

As a result, you will get a vector-based equation on your Prism graph or layout. Because the equation image is vector based, you can scale it up or down to the desired size without affecting image quality.

Note that - when using MS Word - equations cannot be copied into Prism using the standard Clipboard copy command (Command-C). When you do so, nothing happens in Prism when you paste (Command-V) your equation.

You may find more details on inserting and writing new and editing existing equations in MS Office here.

Additional 3rd Party Tools

Other than tools provided within Apple and Microsoft products, there may be additional free or commercial tools available for Mac or Windows that are capable of generating custom equations. While we make no attempt to identify or review alternative tools here, any tool that can generate a copy-able image of the desired equation should be usable (simply create the desired equation with the selected tool, and then copy/paste the resulting image into Prism).