How to transfer data from Polar Precision Performance to Polar Protrainer 5

This is a rather simple task, but because Polar traditionally have stored the data in a sub folder of "Program Files", you soon get into troubles when running on Windows Vista or Windows 7. If yo both run the PPP and the Protrainer 5 on a Windows XP machine, you can skip the next 2 sections that will explain what happens when running on Vista and Win 7 with UAC (User Account Control) enabled. In Windows XP the data will be stored in "C:\Program Files\Polar\Polar Precision Performance".

The reason for this trouble is that only users with administrator rights are allowed to write to "Program Files". (This is done by Microsoft to protect programs from being changed by virus, Trojan horses, etc.) In Windows XP typically everybody run as administrators, but in Vista and Win 7, user with administrator rights, don't run as administrators, but as normal users. When installing a new program Windows prompts you to evaluate your user rights to run as administrator. This is to notify you before writing to "Program Files".

So far, so good, but what happens when a program tries to write data to a "Program Files" sub folder?
Well, Microsoft soon realized that this change would break the functionality of many programs, so they created something called VirtualStore. Whenever a program tries to write to "Program Files" and the program is not started in administrator mode, the write is redirected to the VirtualStore. So to find the data on a Vista or Windows 7, you must look in the VirtualStore. On my computer running Win 7 64 bit, the PPP data are found in this folder: "C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Polar\Polar Precision Performance". Where "MyUsername" is my Windows user name and will be different for you. Since I run on a 64 bit operating system, "Program Files" are called "Program Files (x86)" on my machine.

So now we know where the data are. All the data for a person in the PPP, are stored in a sub folder that has the same name as the person, it is this folder you shall copy. It is smart to take backup of these data, but it should not be necessary if you follow the steps I suggest. First step is to copy the data to a new location. I suggest this not to be in "Program Files", especially when running Vista and Win 7. Protrainer 5 has up to the latest version still used "Program Files" as the default location, but the latest version now uses a more sensible location, Link to polarusa web site explaining the new location. Unfortunately, as the document explains, when installing from a CD and even when upgrading to latest version, the program still defaults to the old location. I do recommend to copy the data to the location described in that document. Personally I chose to copy the data to "My documents". It does not really matter where you copy the data to, as long as it is outside of the "Program Files".

Now you have copied the old PPP data, now it is time to get the data into Protrainer 5. Here I assume that you have a new and empty Protrainer 5 installation and have not already created a with the same name. I do recommend downloading and running the latest Protrainer 5 update file. Normally this is done from within the program, but it is possible to download the update program from your webbrowser also.
When starting up Protrainer 5, the first thing you are asked is to create a new person. At the bottom of this dialog is a button called "Add existing person". When clicking this button a browser window opens up asking you to locate the ppd (Polar Person Data File) of the person to add. Then just open to folder you just copied, select the person ppd file and click open. Then the data are automatically converted to the new format and you are ready to go. All training zones and new exercise types are automatically added. I have so far not seen anything missing. It looks so suspiciously similar to PPP that one have to wonder what the improvements really are, but that is a different topic.

If you want to add more persons in Protrainer 5 you should change the default data location. This can be done by selecting options and preferences in the menu and selecting "File locations" tab in the preferences dialog. Change the data location to the folder where you copied the old PPP person to.