Renaming a spectrum image acquisition

[Probeman]

One of the things that has always bugged me about Thermo NSS, and now Thermo Pathfinder, is that there appears to be no way to *re-name* a spectrum image that has been acquired.  One can easily re-name a single spectrum acquisition, but I haven't found a way to re-name a spectrum image acquisition.

You know how once in a while you accidentally name a sample incorrectly and you'd like to fix that?  Well the following procedure is not for the faint of heart, but it does work!

Start by closing Pathfinder (this procedure might work for those still using NSS but I haven't tried), as we don't want to confuse the software!

Next open the project folder containing spectrum image using Windows Explorer, and note that each spectrum image is saved to its own folder. Then first rename the folder containing the spectrum image acquisition.

Then go into that spectrum image folder and rename each of the spectrum image files for the same name, that is the .sitif, .csi, .si and .siref files.

Finally open the .csi file using a text editor such as NotePad.  Note that you might not be able to open the .csi file by right clicking and using the open or send to menus, you might (as I did), have to open your text editor and then browse to it using the File | Open menu in NotePad.

Then edit the three lines containing the names of the files that you renamed in the previous steps and save it.

Did you make a backup copy of the spectrum image folder before you did any of this?  Good!  It might just work, try it and see by opening Pathfinder and click on the (now renamed) spectrum image and see if you get any errors.

john