[Jaylinz]

Hi all,
I have a question about csv and pdf bookmarks. Is there a way for the bookmarks to not create multiple files? I'm a church organist who regularly uses multiple hymnals every week. They each contain hundreds of songs. Splitting them into individual songs makes a mess of my library. Is there a way to have like a clickable table of contents at the beginning of each hymnal? Or maybe there is another solution someone else can suggest? Thanks in advance!

[Lawrie]

Hi Jaylinz,
Short answer: The import does NOT create multiple files.  At least not for me.  I have turned OFF MS ability to manage files - I don't know if this impacts CSV import or not.

Long answer:
I have a similar need in that one of the bands I play in is a local Salvation Army band.

As I'm sure you know, they have multiple "song books" which would be equivalent to several Hymnals.

When I looked into storing some of these books in my system I ended up doing CSV imports as it seemed the most appropriate.  I am very happy with the result.

As I choose to manage files myself, I have a directory (folder) structure in place that makes sense to me, and I copy the pdf into the appropriate folder where it stays and from where it is used.

The import process I use has a unique Collection name included in the CSV file for each song book, which results in the creation of a new collection with all the songs from the song book.  So effectively, this new collection is the song book (hymnal) in question, and the collection listing would equate to the table of contents you're requesting.  NB these are database entries, NOT separate files.

One of these song books has almost 1000 songs, but note that this does not create 1000 pdf files.  There is only ONE pdf, and almost 1000 entries in the collection which point to different pages in the pdf.

The only downside I've found is if I want to turn to the next page because the next song I need to play happens to be there, I have to go back to the collection list instead of simply turning to the next page.

If it annoys me enough I might look into MS bookmarks and see if they would be more useful, and if they can be automatically generated from the existing CSV or something, but for now I'm happy with my current solution.

[McAroni]

Lawrie is right. A csv import only creates song entries in the database. The original pdf stays untouched.

As Tipp for going to the next song: you dont have to go back to your collections or setlists. Just create a Touch Action. I createt a two Finger tap for the next song and a three Finger tap for the peviews song. 
So you could simple go the the next song.

Settings->Touch and Pedal Actions->Touch Actions

[Lawrie]

Hey McAroni,
great suggestion with the multi finger tap.  Unfortunately my Tab X seems to be ignoring a 3 finger tap, but the 2 finger tap is just fine, and I set the bottom tap for previous so it's all good anyhow

[McAroni]

You're welcome

[mdavej]

If you allow individual songs to be created on import, that gives you much more flexibility for searching, organizing and creating set lists. 

But if you insist, just make one "song" for each book and just use the pdf bookmarks, if they exist, for navigation. There's nothing in MSP preventing you from doing that.

[Jaylinz]

Hi all,
Thanks for the replies! A couple of things:

I misspoke when I said importing csv bookmarks creates multiple files. I should've said multiple "songs".

The way csv bookmarks works isn't really ideal for me. I don't like have hundreds of songs cluttering up my library. I understand I can organize them with set-lists and collections, but that sometimes I need to browse through all my pieces for various reasons and it's quite messy. I also am sometimes needing to flip around in the hymnal during a service, and if all the songs are separated, I lose that ability.

Pdf bookmarks work a little better for me, but I find that the interface leaves a lot to be desired when I'm trying to scroll through hundreds of songs.

What would be awesome is if I could make my own table of contents as a several page document in a pdf editor, and enter hyperlinks to the necessary page. That way I could format it to my taste.  Is something like that possible?

[McAroni]

Take a look at the manual for mobilesheets, which you can download from the homepage. If you download the manual and import it into mobilesheets, the table of contents will work as you have described.
I think if you create a pdf following this example you should get what you want.
https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/manual/

[itsme]

" ... sometimes I need to browse through all my pieces for various reasons and it's quite messy. I also am sometimes needing to flip around in the hymnal during a service, and if all the songs are separated, I lose that ability."
That's why most of my CSV files contain an entry that adds the complete book.
E.g. the CSV files from https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...-9695.html contain a line like
;~CJB Fakebook 2023 (complete);;1;1-758;Fakebook;;;;;;CJB Fakebook 2023
The ~ at the beginning of the title makes sure that complete books are sorted to the beginning of the list on the songs tab.
Entries in the columns SourceTypes and Albums allow filtering for a specific book and for separating single songs, complete books and TOCs

Here you can find some tips & tricks to convert PDF bookmarks to CSV files and vice versa
https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...-5298.html
https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...-8565.html

If you invest some effort you can easily create CSV files and PDF bookmarks for your books that allow anything you like. 
Take a thorough look at the CSV file, bookmarks usage and filtering features of Mobile Sheets.

[mdavej]

Hi all,
Thanks for the replies! A couple of things:

I misspoke when I said importing csv bookmarks creates multiple files. I should've said multiple "songs".

The way csv bookmarks works isn't really ideal for me. I don't like have hundreds of songs cluttering up my library. I understand I can organize them with set-lists and collections, but that sometimes I need to browse through all my pieces for various reasons and it's quite messy. I also am sometimes needing to flip around in the hymnal during a service, and if all the songs are separated, I lose that ability.

Pdf bookmarks work a little better for me, but I find that the interface leaves a lot to be desired when I'm trying to scroll through hundreds of songs.

What would be awesome is if I could make my own table of contents as a several page document in a pdf editor, and enter hyperlinks to the necessary page. That way I could format it to my taste.  Is something like that possible?

I did precisely that 20 years ago using Excel and Adobe Reader on a laptop before any music reading software existed, creating a hyperlink to a specific page in a specific pdf for every song in every pdf book I had. However, using songs in MSP is far superior to this method in terms of organizing, searching, filtering and navigating. You say too many songs leads to clutter. But this really isn't true. If you put each in the proper collection, they can be managed and filtered quite easily, much more easily than some master pdf bookmarks file. I have over 6000 songs in my MSP library consisting of the contents of dozens of books and hundreds of individual pdf scores. Using collections and custom fields to filter and organize, I can usually find the song I'm looking for within a few seconds. I encourage you to embrace MSP's song concept and organize them using collections. That's really the best way.

To do kind of a hybrid approach, you can make a song for each complete hymnal, then use the pdf bookmarks within each hymnal. MSP would list the hymnals. But there would then be no way to search across hymnals. With the song file for every song approach, they would be searchable. To make your own pdf bookmarks, I recommend JPdf bookmarks. In there, I do multi-level bookmarks, with a clickable letter folder bookmark (A,B,C,etc.) with all the other bookmarks underneath. You could do number ranges or whatever works best for you.

[samibe]

I'm an organist as well. I have several hymn and songbooks in my library. The books I use most I've used csv import to pull in all of the songs and their metadata. This makes it so that if I look at the book in the albums tab, I'm looking at a sortable and searchable table of contents. No links required. I also included as much metadata as possible (meters, tune names, composer, lyricist, key, time signature, tempo, duration, topic, holiday (if applicable), etc.) This makes it a lot easier to search for a specific holiday (for example) and get a group of songs (in book or alphabetical order) that are relevant to the same holiday.

Importing multiple hymnals does mean that I have duplicates of several hymns. I find this somewhat helpful because often the duplicates aren't identical. They might be in different keys or one might have the harmony filled out more, or be a better scan, etc. I now have the option to use the version I like best.

On the other hand, I also have several anthology type books that I don't have split into individual songs (mainly because I'm not sure I want that many songs cluttering up my library that I probably won't play or use). In this case, csv import is also nice because I can select the handful of songs I want, and import only those. I'll usually include the whole book as one of the songs so that I can access other (un-imported) songs in the book in the remote chance I need to.