[LittleReg1]

I have ~400 songbooks scanned into single PDF files (one songbook per file).  I would like to know how I can use Mobile Sheets to quickly find a single song within these single multi-song PDF files.  If I have to split the songbook files into individual PDFs, then this is going to take a long time and will result in over 15K files.  Has anyone else had a similar situation?  What is the best way to handle this?  Sorry if this topic has been broached previously, but none of the search terms I used turned up much.  Thanks!

[itsme]

CSV import is the way to go

[LittleReg1]

CSV import is the way to go

OK, can you tell me how I would get there from where I am now?  Thanks.

[Zubersoft]

You can use bookmarks and then use the bookmarks tab, but you'd still have to go through and bookmark every song in all of those songbooks. If you can find a CSV file already made for your songbook (https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...um-29.html) then that would save you a tremendous amount of time. This tutorial video covers importing CSV files (and the expected syntax in them): https://youtu.be/KuVTaWj7YAU

Mike

[LittleReg1]

Wow...I didn't know that I had to be a programmer along with being a piano player.  : D   I think I'm going to try the bookmarks approach first...seems cleaner even if more overall labor involved.  Thanks to everyone for your help!

[Zubersoft]

Did you watch the tutorial video by chance? There's nothing that requires programming or anything of that sort. You just have to build a csv file (which can be done with a text editor like notepad, or Microsoft Excel). The first line has the fields you want to populate, i.e.

title;pages;genres;

then each line after that is just the song information, i.e.

First song;1-2;Rock
Second song;3;Jazz
Third song; 4-6;

So a full example would be:

title;pages;genres;
First song;1-2;Rock
Second song;3;Jazz
Third song;4-6;

So you are just typing in the song information you want, and specifying the page numbers. You don't even have to add any metadata, you could just do title;pages at the top and only specify the song title and pages (those two are required at a minimum). So you are just plugging in the page numbers MobileSheets should use. Then you'll get individual songs in the library that you can easily add to setlists. This is really far superior to using bookmarks, so I hope you will consider trying it out.

Mike

[LittleReg1]

Yes, I watched it, but you said "build a CSV file".  If I have to list 15K songs titles...with the number of pages in each, this is twice the data entry than simply entering a song title in a bookmark in a PDF file.  I would also have to count the pages - something I would also not have to do with the bookmarks.  I'm assuming that the bookmarks would simply take me to the spot in the PDF where the song is, and it doesn't matter to me if there are pages of other songs before or after.  Maybe you thought it did?  If so, that's something I did not mention.  I don't want to split the songbook files; I only want to be able to jump into them.

It seems that this CSV approach "fetches" the pages from the whole-file PDFs, but what I'm not understanding is how the songs are actually resident in the application - as temporary displays or permanent files?  To me, this is "programming" even though I'm not using the term exactly as it's normally used.  What am I missing here?

[LittleReg1]

P.S. Ihave a considerable number of songs that have punctuation in the song titles, and yes, commas.  Also, I noticed that the video stated that only one PDF its corresponding CSV can be imported at the same time, whereas any number of PDFs can be imported in that's all you're doing.  Again, unless I'm misinterpreting the video, it doesn't seem to me that the CSV import is a good fit for me, especially since all I need are song titles.  Thanks.

[Skip]

Since you already have a pdf with multiple songs loaded you can make a 'snippet'. To create a snippet display the pdf>edit [tap center of screen]> tap the left most icon [circle with a down pointing triangle], make appropriate entries and save. You still need to enter the title and the range of pages of the selection. You can select just the songs you want/need, They will show up in the main library as separate entries [as if loaded individually]. I use the 'albums tab for multi-page pdfs [books]. There is no need to break the big pdf down and no csv. It's just a continuation of the original work flow.

Edit; Just watch the upper right screen on the big pdf to determine page range before making the snippet.

[Zubersoft]

The "Create Snippet" option is just an alternate to using a csv file, but the end result is the exact same. It's a separate song in the library referencing the same underlying PDF but with a different page order. 

If using bookmarks works better for you, then you can certainly do that. You can use the bookmarks window in MobileSheets to jump to the bookmarks, use the bookmarks tab, use PDF hyperlinks if that's better for you, or split up the PDF using PDF bookmarks (in a similar manner to how CSV files are used but it just splits up the PDF into many songs where each song uses the range of pages between each bookmark).

Mike