ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > Adding elements to a Protocol
Adding elements to a Protocol
In brief
Adding an element to a protocol is very simple, just click the 
Add item button in the ribbon bar and then select the type of element you want to add from the menu which appears.
Details
As well as adding a protocol element using the 
Add item button you can also add one by clicking the right-hand mouse button somewhere in the protocol list and selecting an appropriate option from the menu which appears.
In fact there's even a third way to add an element. If you press the 'Insert' key on the keyboard when a protocol element is selected then a new element of the same type will be added.
You may find that some of the elements on the 
Add item button menu are disabled. This can occur for two reasons:
| • | When the relevant item requires other elements which aren't present in the protocol yet. For example, you can't add a zone until you've added at least one apparatus item. This is because a zone defines areas within your apparatus but if you have no apparatus clearly you can't have any zones. |
| • | When a test is being performed, you can't add items which would affect the running test. For example, you can't add a new zone while a test is running. |
The best strategy when building a protocol is simply to work down the elements shown in the protocol list in the order they're listed.
You can add new elements to a protocol at any time, even after an experiment is finished. This is extremely useful as it means you can add new elements to analyse things you hadn't even though of when you designed the protocol. For example, you might create a plusmaze protocol with Open arm and Closed arm zones. You then run an experiment and analyse your results. Later you read an article which reports results for the ends of the open arms and you wonder whether your results would be the same. To find out, you could simply open the existing experiment, add a new 'Ends of open arm' zone and analyse the results!
See also:
| • | The elements of a protocol |
| • | Editing the elements of a protocol |
| • | Deleting elements from a protocol |
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ANY-maze help topic T0726