The following tips are valuable when considering importing FACSDiva experiment files into FCS Express.

 

When importing FACSDiva experiments into FCS Express, all plots in the experiment will be recreated on your layout. Although each plot can be reformatted using standard FCS Express techniques, it is useful to remember that the default format (i.e., fonts, axes labels, plot resolution, overlay settings, etc.) can be defined before a plot is created, in FCS Express User Options. To ensure that imported plots are displayed in the manner that you prefer, it is recommended that you take advantage of the default options before you import FACSDiva experiments. For convenience, you can create a user (e.g., "FACSDiva Import"), under whom the specific default options may be defined without affecting your default settings for working with other types of data files.

 

Among the plot settings that you will most likely want to configure are:

 

•Legend visibility

 

Displaying the legend takes away viewable space from the plot. Therefore, you should consider hiding the legend if your FACSDiva experiment displays many plots on a page.

 

•Histogram resolution

 

Typically, the histogram resolution is set to be derived from the FCS File. In high resolution data with lots of channels, there are likely to be very few events in each channel. Lowering the resolution to 1024 channels may improve the appearance of the histograms.

 

•Scaling the Axes

 

When you import your experiment into FCS Express, your plots are displayed with the axes scale settings that are stored in the experiment file. You are not obligated to keep these axes scales, however. For example, if an imported plot is displayed with five decades, you may decide that it is better displayed with only four decades. You can also change the scale between linear, logarithmic, and biexponential.