Moving from Legacy Mathcad to Mathcad Prime

After launching Mathcad Prime, start the worksheet converter tool. From the ribbon’s Input/Output tab, press the XMCD, MCD Converter button.

Note: If the XMCD, MCD Converter button is grayed out, the worksheet converter is not installed.

In the worksheet converter tool, press the Add Worksheets button to browse for your legacy worksheets that you wish to convert into Mathcad Prime worksheets.

After loading one worksheet or multiple worksheets into the worksheet converter, select the worksheets and press the Convert button. Observe the conversion status as the worksheets are processed.

Open your new Mathcad Prime worksheets and edit them as needed. You can open the worksheets directly from the converter.

This will be useful for having a reference to the original converted worksheet including the annotations provided by the converter tool.

When first opening the worksheet in Mathcad Prime, you may see question marks where you expect to see numerical results. From the ribbon’s Calculation tab, press the Calculate Worksheet button to update all calculations and results.

Note: Running Calculate Worksheet after opening the worksheet is only needed the first time you open the worksheet after converting it.

This will show you exactly where the header and footer space is, where the margins are, and where the main body of the worksheet is. All converted worksheets use the fine grid layout in Mathcad Prime. From the ribbon’s Documents tab, you can turn on the grid before working in your new Mathcad Prime worksheet. This will make it easier to add your header/footer content, remove extra space, and shift content that may overflow into the margins or into the non-printable space (Draft View) back onto the main body (Page View) of the worksheet.

Tip: Keep the grid on while making formatting edits. It can always be turned off once you’ve completed formatting the worksheet.

Sometimes, the worksheet converter can place content off the main page body (known as Page View) and in the margins, perhaps extending into the non-printable Draft View of the worksheet. In these cases, save time by changing page orientation, margins, and paper size before moving content.

Headers and footers are not included in the conversion. You may see artifacts of headers and footers from the legacy worksheet in your Mathcad Prime worksheet.

Remove any artifacts in headers and footers, then spend a few minutes to create your headers and footers using the WYSIWYG, interactive header/footer method in Mathcad Prime.

When the worksheet converter creates the new Mathcad Prime worksheet, you may notice blocks of extra vertical space added where such blocks of space were not in the original legacy worksheet. The quickest way to remove blocks of extra vertical space is by using the Remove Space button on the ribbon’s Documentation tab. Press Remove Space and select Empty Space to remove any empty space between your cursor and the content below. You may also open the right-click menu and select Remove Space after your cursor is positioned. All content below will be pulled up to that anchor point. This is much faster than selecting the regions and dragging them up, better than using cut/paste to move regions, and better than removing one blank line of extra space at a time.

Every converted worksheet will have a conversion log in the worksheet converter tool. Most messages are related to formatting and display differences and can be disregarded. Scan the conversion log for messages related to failures or concerning messages, then find those regions in the Mathcad Prime worksheet. All messages from the conversion log are visible in the Mathcad Prime worksheet (Tooltip format) when you click on a region with a red arrow.

Once you’ve reviewed the annotations and have validated your Mathcad Prime worksheet, remove the annotations. From the ribbon, select Clear Annotations from the Input/Output tab.