# Import Maldi plate

This operation allows you to import a Maldi plate from a CSV file.

Usage

You can execute this operation by clicking the menu option Import/Import Maldi plate.

A dialog will appear allowing you to choose the CSV file containing the Maldi plate. As you can see in the following image, this dialog requires you to provide the following information:

- CSV file: a CSV containing the Maldi plate to be imported.
- CSV format: the CSV format of the selected CSV file. S2P includes two preconfigured formats for Excel and Open/LibreOffice applications. In case you need to specify a custom CSV format you can select the Custom option, which allows you to configure the CSV format.

Import Maldi plate dialog

As commented above, you can customize the CSV format by selecting the Custom format option. When you select this option, the following custom format panel will be shown in the dialog. The options included in this panel will allow you to customize the CSV format:

- Quote fields: if this option is selected, then all fields will be quoted in the resulting CSV file.
- Column separator: the separator character/s between columns.
- Decimal separator: the character to use as decimal separator. Note that the decimal separator should be different from the column separator; otherwise, it may result in an unreadable CSV file.
- Line break: the type of line break depending in the target operating system.

Custom CSV panel

After clicking the Ok button, the imported Maldi plate is added as a Maldi plate datatype to the clipboard and automatically opened in the Maldi plate editor.

CSV file content

In order to import a Maldi plate from a CSV file, this file must have the following contents:

- Column names in the first row.
- Row names in the first column.
- Plate positions in the rest of the cells.

The following content is an example of a valid Maldi plate CSV file:

    	,1,2
    	A,140,200
    	B,,45
    	C,50,