What to do

There are three ways to use this app:
1 - Through the User Interface. Paste data in from the clipboard. (Data in from files is only from the command line.)
2 - From the command line. Pass an ascii file using the command line switches. (Data in through the clipboard is only from the UI.)
3 - Programatically. Write your own program and call into the dlls that are in the program folder. Not for the faint hearted.

If you want to use 1 then skip the next two lines.
If you want to use 2 then have a look at the command line interface page.
If you want to use 3 then you either know what to do from the words above or you don't know what this means. The dll is .Net . Beyond that you are on your own.

Here we go.
Copy into the Clipboard a list of spectral peaks. Think about what this means.
Some manufactures produce both stick data and continuous data. The former is a list you can put in Excel and sort and change and do useful things with. The latter is a numeric version of a picture that you can do nothing useful with. This app works with numbers; it knows nothing about mass or intensity. Both the types of data are numbers, therefore it will "work" with any of them, but the results will only meaningful when you pass in lists.

Paste this data either by clicking the Paste button or clicking into the left hand box and using Ctrl V.
The input (the data you just pasted) :
1. has any rows that start with non-numeric characters removed,
2. is split up into rows expecting either tab, comma or space as the seperator character between the first two columns,
3. has the rows checked so that only the first two columns are used,
2. is sorted by mass (which is presumed to be the first column),
2. has the intensity values (which is presumed to be the second column) changed so that the biggest peak is given the Normalised intensity value that you specify in the selection box at the bottom,
3. has all intensities that are below the percentage in the selection box rejected, and
4. all rows that have the same mass value have their intensities collapsed together.

This gives you a short version of your input with simpler intensities.

Now you have a choice.
1. Copy the data back into the clipboard or
2. Save the data as a file.
Both of thes have buttons for the job, so click one of them.

Output types
If you choose to copy or save as text then you get exactly what is in the output box.
If you choose to copy or save as MSP then the data has MSP specific info added to it, before either copy or save.
More info - An MSP file needs a header line that starts NAME: and then some value. If it doesn't have one then it isn't an MSP file regardless of what file extension you give it. If you copy the output data then a header line with the Name set to the time you pressed copy (a timestamp) is added. If you save the output data then you have to fill in the header yourself. Just try it and see. MSP format also needs a line before the numbers saying how many mass/intensity pairs will follow. That gets added too, but you don't get any choice on that one.

That's it.
You now have your long list as an MSP file.

If you have a copy the NIST search engine then you can paste the MSP directly in from the clipboard or import one from a file (that you have just made).

One more thing.
When you paste data in you can either replace or add to the data that is already there.
If you add then you can take data from multiple sources and compile them into one.

One last thing.
There are example input files in the program folder. You can use these to experiment with copying and passing files and making your own output.