In the earlier version of the EPMA software, this only updated the "working" condition file of that Sample. However this has now been changed so that it will also update the "Master" condition file for that element. This is good, because now when one goes into Standard Analysis and opens the element condition file for that element, the changes will be there also.

However, the problem is that it will make the change to all of the condition setups that involve the same element, spectrometer, and crystal, if the name at the top of the setup is the same. This is something the user might not want. The user may have a number of setups for a given element-spectrometer-crystal configuration, with different background settings, each for a different type of analyses.

To ensure that changes made in Quant Background only affect the one element setup, make sure the “Name” at the top of the column of each setup is different. Go to Quantitative Analyses > Measurement > Element Condition > Condition, this will open the “WDS Element Data Table”. Click on the element of interest. This will open the master element condition file for that element. At the top of each column is the setup “Name”. This can be changed from the element name. So instead of “Mo” one could change it to, for example, “Mo-steel”. If you were now using the “Mo-steel” element condition setup in Quantitative Analysis, when you used Quant Background, it would only modify that one setup with the new background positions.