MacVector’s Primer Database – Importing primers from Excel

Many molecular biologists keep lists of their primer sequences in Excel or some other spreadsheet tool. Previously MacVector had a separate utility that allows you to import primers kept in spreadsheet format into a Primer Database for direct use within MacVector. With the release of MacVector 18.2 we have integrated this functionality within MacVector.

CDC primers

Rather than direct importing the file you will need to first open the CSV file in TextEdit, then copy and paste into MacVector:

  • Prepare your data in an Excel or Numbers spreadsheet with three columns – “Name”, “Sequence”, “Comment”.
  • Export the data (or Save As…) in Tab Separated Values (TSV) format or Comma Separated Values (CSV) format.
  • Open the file with TextEdit, select all the rows of text
  • Edit | Copy
  • switch to MacVector and select File | New From Clipboard.
  • You can also open an existing Primer Database file and paste the new entries into it.

Remember that as well as scanning sequences to look for your primers, you can also automatically display primer binding sites with any sequence that you open.

Here’s an overview of all the primer workflows in MacVector.

ScanDNA primers 1

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