Chromatography Forum

Hey everyone,

Two of our machines are newer, running openlab CDS chemstation and the data file is insanely long (c:\CHEM32\2\DATA\folder\Seq 2013-04-04 15-07-05\SIG20000002.D)
Is there a sequence parameter I am missing that I can make this shorter? Can I tell it to save to a completely different path altogether like (C:\CHEM32\2\DATA\DUMP\SIGXXX.D)?

The chemist I work for requested that I start keeping a hand-written log book of the samples I run on our GC's so we don't lose track of stuff. I like the idea but the one problem I am having is the length of the data file. I have one very old machine running the old chemstation and the data file is short (C:\HPCHEM\1\DATA\folder\SIG00001.D) and I love it, easy on the wrist.

Thanks for any advice!

Hi,
The default data path name can and should be changed in Chemstation. In the A series, the deafult path were edited in the Chemstation instrument set up part, not in Chemstation itself. The default data path name (c:\CHEM32\2\DATA\) in Chemstation is one of many bad decisions made in the 90:ties by then HP. Change it to for instance to c:\DataLC02\ here assuming the instrument is named LC02. Thereby a reistallation av the software will never risk to damage your data. then you can have as short subfolder names and sequence names as you want. Although to short names is not good, folders named "1" and "2" as in the default path are not so descriptive in my opinion.

(For instance, Masslynx has the same misstake to mix data and software - a default reinstallation of Masslynx will wipe out your data since the default data path in mixed with the software installation.) Hope it helps.

Two choices, in an online session, select the menu View > Preferences (if Preferences is not there, select 'Full Menus' at the bottom of View). In Preferences click on the 'Sequence' tab (this tab is not there in the offline session).

Choice 1: Turn off 'Unique Folder Creation', and it will work like your old ChemStation.

Choice 2: Choose a shorter 'unique folder' name, default is <SeqN> <Date> <Time>. You could use <User><Counter> or type in text like: Lab2<Counter>