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Version 2.0 Profiles

Micro-Manager 2.0 includes a User Profile system, which is used to remember user settings (like window positions, acquisition settings, and preferred hardware config files) across multiple program sessions. Whereas (on Windows) Micro-Manager 1.4 stored this settings information in the registry, Micro-Manager 2.0 instead stores settings in files in the user’s home directory. To be specific, profile files on Windows are located at C:\Users\currentUserName\AppData\Local\Micro-Manager. The “Profiles.txt” file in that directory contains a mapping of user names to their profile files, e.g. telling you that the “Default user” profile maps to profile-1.txt.

Multiple profiles may be used for a single operating system user. This is useful for setups where there is a single “microscope user” on the operating system, which is shared between multiple people. When you launch Micro-Manager, you will be prompted for which profile to use, and given the option to create a new profile. If you have separate operating system users for each person who controls the scope, then you can simply use the “Default user” profile; as each person has a separate account on the computer, their “Default users” will hold separate settings.

You can also create a “global” profile which contains settings that are shared across all users on the system. This profile must be accessible to all users, potentially across multiple accounts; therefore (if it exists) it is located in the Micro-Manager installation itself. For example, if your install is at C:\Program Files\Micro-Manager-2.0, then the global profile would be located at C:\Program Files\Micro-Manager-2.0\GlobalUserProfile.txt.

The global profile does not exist by default; however, you can create it by copying an existing user’s profile file (like profile-1.txt mentioned earlier) into your installation directory. You may wish to make the global profile file read-only, so that only users with administrative access to the computer can modify it.

Settings in the global profile are provided as fallback options that are used if a specific user’s profile does not have the required information. For example, if the global profile’s MDA (multi-dimensional data acquisition) dialog defaults to a 10-timepoint time series, then the first time a new user runs the program, they would “inherit” that time series as their default acquisition settings. However, if they then changed to a 20-timepoint series, then in future sessions, their new preference would be remembered, even if the global profile were to be updated.