[KHS]

HELP! I'm trying to swap in a corrected .PDF for over 1200 songs that access that .PDF. I've read the manual. As soon as I attempt to select more than one song in the Songs list (let alone all the songs in the Songs list that match my search criteria (Album=MyBigPDF)), the Swap File option no longer appears in the three-dot overflow menu. Am I missing something? Surely I don't have to do this a song at a time? I'm running the latest Windows 10 version.

Rather than bother to figure this out, can I just manually replace the .PDF with an identically named one in the MSP data folder? I really am losing my patience with everything I want to do becoming a forum question.

[KHS]

FWIW, I just tried simply using the operating system to replace the .PDF (with MSP not running) with my identically-named substitute (on my experimental library, not on my gig machine) and so far all seems well. Of course, by doing it that way, I lose the chance to have the .PDF re-cropped by MSP.

[Zubersoft]

If multiple songs use the same PDF, and you want to replace it with a new version, you can use the swap file feature on one of those songs and it will replace the file for all of them (so long as the file name doesn't change). This is equivalent to just replacing the file on disk, which it sounds like you did.

As far as you losing your patience, I'm not sure what alternative you would like for obtaining answers to questions. I respond to emails pretty quickly, but the forum posts also benefit other users who may have the same questions. I plan on improving the manual and providing a web-based solution that will hopefully make it easier to look up answers to specific questions, but I don't really have the bandwidth for that until I complete other work. 

Mike

[itsme]

@KHS: you might try
- reading the manual
- using the search function of the forum
- making a backup of your MSP data and experiment

[KHS]

@KHS: you might try
- reading the manual
- using the search function of the forum
- making a backup of your MSP data and experiment

A tad snarky, no?

1 - I ALWAYS read the manual first. It mentions nothing about Swapping for 1 file to change it for all. It also mentions nothing about the name having to be the same. It suggests instead that I can mark all the songs and then Swap, which does NOT work. Mike's reply makes that clear. One SHOULD be able to mark multiple files that rely on one .PDF and swap that out in one simple maneuver--and the .PDF filename of the new file should not need to match the old. The program should work for me, not the other way around.

2 - I DID search on several different versions of "swap" and "multiple" files and nothing relevant was found.

3 - That's what I'm usually stuck with doing and I never apply new techniques to my real working library--only to a separate installation on another computer. I should not have to outsmart the program every time to get simple things done. Eventually, it will outsmart me and I'll do something that appears to work and it will be too late to restore from a backup when I realize the glitch.

My point (still valid) is that after doing all those things, it should be FAR more intuitive and, at the very least, procedures outlined in the manual should work. In this case, it does not.

[KHS]

If multiple songs use the same PDF, and you want to replace it with a new version, you can use the swap file feature on one of those songs and it will replace the file for all of them (so long as the file name doesn't change). This is equivalent to just replacing the file on disk, which it sounds like you did.

As far as you losing your patience, I'm not sure what alternative you would like for obtaining answers to questions. I respond to emails pretty quickly, but the forum posts also benefit other users who may have the same questions. I plan on improving the manual and providing a web-based solution that will hopefully make it easier to look up answers to specific questions, but I don't really have the bandwidth for that until I complete other work. 

Mike

Thanks, Mike. Please know, however, that the current manual does not say what you just did and I tried to rely on the manual before bothering you (or anyone else) on the Forum.  You are indeed extremely responsive to questions and I appreciate that. My only criticism is that I've had to ask more questions about the functioning of this application than with any of the hundreds of Windows applications I've used over almost 40 years.

[Zubersoft]

Page 11 of the manual indicates that the swap action is only available when one song is selected. Page 39 also only mentions selecting a single song to perform the swap. So I don't think I really made mention of being able to select multiple songs to swap files. Having said that, I should probably mention in the manual that if multiple songs share the same file, you only need to swap the file for one of the songs, and the others will automatically detect changes when they are loaded next. Ultimately, what I really should do is detect if a file is being swapped out that is used by multiple songs, and ask the user if they want to perform the swap operation for every song in the library that shares that same file so that you can get updated cropping coordinates.

On a side note, the file name does not need to be the same to perform the swap. The reason I said it should be the same in this case is because if all of your other songs are pointing to a file named "FileA.pdf" for example, and you replace "FileA.pdf" with "FileB.pdf" in just one of the songs, it's not going to replace that file for all the other songs. All the other songs will continue to use "FileA.pdf".  If you replace "FileA.pdf" with an updated "FileA.pdf" then all of the songs will detect the changed file (although the full swap procedure will not be performed on all of the songs to update cropping coordinates, but it will handle things like the number of pages in the PDF changing). Sorry if I gave you the impression that the file name had to be the same to use the swapping feature - it doesn't.

I understand you've definitely encountered a lot of problems that you've had to ask a lot of questions about. I think this is mainly due to the way in which you are using MobileSheetsPro. You are more of an advanced user that is accessing functionality that is not as widely used. This is no excuse for software functionality that is not intuitive, it just means that I may not have provided as much guidance in the manual for all of the scenarios you've encountered. I think most users just import PDFs and load setlists from their songs. Most users do not make use of the CSV import functionality. So there is a lot of room for me to improve the manual and provide other means of obtaining answers, like a knowledge base or wiki on the website. Part of this lack of documentation is because I've been working part time on MobileSheetsPro since it was created. It's only this year that I've gone full time, so I will have more time to dedicate to polishing the app, making things more intuitive and providing tutorials and guidance in the app.

While it's not your responsibility to point out things you are think are unintuitive or need fixing, if you would like certain parts of the application improved, please provide specific feedback. I value user feedback very much, and it's what will help the application grow and improve. Things you think are unintuitive may seem perfectly fine to me or others, so there are things I may not even think need fixing. This is part of the problem of the programmer being the UI designer - I don't have input from multiple perspectives and I don't have a UI expert to help guide things. I just do what makes sense to me and then listen to user feedback.

Thanks,
Mike

[KHS]

Page 11 of the manual indicates that the swap action is only available when one song is selected. Page 39 also only mentions selecting a single song to perform the swap. So I don't think I really made mention of being able to select multiple songs to swap files. Having said that, I should probably mention in the manual that if multiple songs share the same file, you only need to swap the file for one of the songs, and the others will automatically detect changes when they are loaded next. Ultimately, what I really should do is detect if a file is being swapped out that is used by multiple songs, and ask the user if they want to perform the swap operation for every song in the library that shares that same file so that you can get updated cropping coordinates.

On a side note, the file name does not need to be the same to perform the swap. The reason I said it should be the same in this case is because if all of your other songs are pointing to a file named "FileA.pdf" for example, and you replace "FileA.pdf" with "FileB.pdf" in just one of the songs, it's not going to replace that file for all the other songs. All the other songs will continue to use "FileA.pdf".  If you replace "FileA.pdf" with an updated "FileA.pdf" then all of the songs will detect the changed file (although the full swap procedure will not be performed on all of the songs to update cropping coordinates, but it will handle things like the number of pages in the PDF changing). Sorry if I gave you the impression that the file name had to be the same to use the swapping feature - it doesn't.

I understand you've definitely encountered a lot of problems that you've had to ask a lot of questions about. I think this is mainly due to the way in which you are using MobileSheetsPro. You are more of an advanced user that is accessing functionality that is not as widely used. This is no excuse for software functionality that is not intuitive, it just means that I may not have provided as much guidance in the manual for all of the scenarios you've encountered. I think most users just import PDFs and load setlists from their songs. Most users do not make use of the CSV import functionality. So there is a lot of room for me to improve the manual and provide other means of obtaining answers, like a knowledge base or wiki on the website. Part of this lack of documentation is because I've been working part time on MobileSheetsPro since it was created. It's only this year that I've gone full time, so I will have more time to dedicate to polishing the app, making things more intuitive and providing tutorials and guidance in the app.

While it's not your responsibility to point out things you are think are unintuitive or need fixing, if you would like certain parts of the application improved, please provide specific feedback. I value user feedback very much, and it's what will help the application grow and improve. Things you think are unintuitive may seem perfectly fine to me or others, so there are things I may not even think need fixing. This is part of the problem of the programmer being the UI designer - I don't have input from multiple perspectives and I don't have a UI expert to help guide things. I just do what makes sense to me and then listen to user feedback.

Thanks,
Mike

Mike, I apologize and beg your forgiveness. I just re-read page 39-40 of the Manual and I certainly don't see what I thought I saw last night. Perhaps dealing all day with a contractor and a mortgage refi had fried my brain. By doing it manually (replacing the .PDF manually), if I had manually cropped some of the pages for the new .PDF, will that affect how that page appears (given that I allowed MSP to do the cropping when I imported the original .PDF)? Will I still be ok if all I did was crop out white space and had not enlarged or shrunk the printed portions of the page? [I'm worried that your coordinates assume the page is the original size and calculates from the upper left of the originally-sized page.] If not, it sounds as if I'd better delete all the songs (my last Forum problem) and start over with the new .PDF and the old .CSV.
Again, my apologies for my error and my rudeness.

[KHS]

@KHS: you might try
- reading the manual
- using the search function of the forum
- making a backup of your MSP data and experiment

I apologize. Although I had first read the manual (see my apology to Mike), I obviously saw something that wasn't there. Now I'll get to re-visit how to delete all 1,200 songs that point to a particular .PDF and start over.

[Zubersoft]

MobileSheetsPro is going to still use the old cropping coordinates that were assigned if you replace the file, unless those cropping coordinates are detected as invalid after it checks for changes in the file. So the cropping may not match what you are looking for in all cases. It's not too difficult to reset the cropping for a collection of songs though - just add them all to a setlist, load that setlist, go into the cropping editor, tap Settings in the overflow menu, change it to crop "All songs in setlist" and then you can tap "CLEAR" to clear the cropping for all of the songs in the entire setlist. Alternatively, you can go to the overflow menu and tap "Auto-crop all pages"  and this would recalculate the cropping coordinates for every song in the setlist. If you add all of the songs in your library to one setlist (also easy to do, create a new setlist and in the group editor, tap the add all icon at the top right which looks like two arrows), you can auto-crop them all at once. So I don't think you need to delete and re-add all your files.

I did not think you were being rude - there are still plenty of areas for me to improve both the manual and the app. If a user encounters usability issues with the app, that means something in the design should be improved. It's sometimes difficult to find the right balance between having access to lots of things at once (i.e. icons that don't take up a lot of space) and having things be very accessible (i.e. names below icons, tooltips, contextual help, etc). I'll keep working to improve things over time as I can.

Mike

[KHS]

Page 11 of the manual indicates that the swap action is only available when one song is selected. Page 39 also only mentions selecting a single song to perform the swap. So I don't think I really made mention of being able to select multiple songs to swap files. Having said that, I should probably mention in the manual that if multiple songs share the same file, you only need to swap the file for one of the songs, and the others will automatically detect changes when they are loaded next. Ultimately, what I really should do is detect if a file is being swapped out that is used by multiple songs, and ask the user if they want to perform the swap operation for every song in the library that shares that same file so that you can get updated cropping coordinates.

On a side note, the file name does not need to be the same to perform the swap. The reason I said it should be the same in this case is because if all of your other songs are pointing to a file named "FileA.pdf" for example, and you replace "FileA.pdf" with "FileB.pdf" in just one of the songs, it's not going to replace that file for all the other songs. All the other songs will continue to use "FileA.pdf".  If you replace "FileA.pdf" with an updated "FileA.pdf" then all of the songs will detect the changed file (although the full swap procedure will not be performed on all of the songs to update cropping coordinates, but it will handle things like the number of pages in the PDF changing). Sorry if I gave you the impression that the file name had to be the same to use the swapping feature - it doesn't.

I understand you've definitely encountered a lot of problems that you've had to ask a lot of questions about. I think this is mainly due to the way in which you are using MobileSheetsPro. You are more of an advanced user that is accessing functionality that is not as widely used. This is no excuse for software functionality that is not intuitive, it just means that I may not have provided as much guidance in the manual for all of the scenarios you've encountered. I think most users just import PDFs and load setlists from their songs. Most users do not make use of the CSV import functionality. So there is a lot of room for me to improve the manual and provide other means of obtaining answers, like a knowledge base or wiki on the website. Part of this lack of documentation is because I've been working part time on MobileSheetsPro since it was created. It's only this year that I've gone full time, so I will have more time to dedicate to polishing the app, making things more intuitive and providing tutorials and guidance in the app.

While it's not your responsibility to point out things you are think are unintuitive or need fixing, if you would like certain parts of the application improved, please provide specific feedback. I value user feedback very much, and it's what will help the application grow and improve. Things you think are unintuitive may seem perfectly fine to me or others, so there are things I may not even think need fixing. This is part of the problem of the programmer being the UI designer - I don't have input from multiple perspectives and I don't have a UI expert to help guide things. I just do what makes sense to me and then listen to user feedback.

Thanks,
Mike

I do suggest that the user be given the opportunity to select multiple files and Swap in the same way as a single song works--IOW, for the user to be able to select which particular songs should Swap to a new .PDF (for example, the ones for which I'd manually re-cropped their .PDF pages), rather than (1) having to choose between doing it one song at a time OR (2) having the Swap automatically performed on all songs using that old .PDF [as you described] but without re-cropping. I often load a PDF (using .CSV Import) before I've fully vetted the PDF, so I can play through the book noting problems as I go and then edit the problem pages outside of MSP, sometimes resulting in a larger or smaller page size and/or croppable area, and then re-create the PDF with the substitute pages. FYI, my favorite targets for this treatment are multi-verse songs where the publisher was too lazy to put the subsequent verses where they belong and instead threw them at the end of the song. I often have to reduce the croppable white space in order to place those lyrics where they belong. I'd like to be able to select only those songs and have MSP work only on them (including cropping) from the new PDF.

[KHS]

Page 11 of the manual indicates that the swap action is only available when one song is selected. Page 39 also only mentions selecting a single song to perform the swap. So I don't think I really made mention of being able to select multiple songs to swap files. Having said that, I should probably mention in the manual that if multiple songs share the same file, you only need to swap the file for one of the songs, and the others will automatically detect changes when they are loaded next. Ultimately, what I really should do is detect if a file is being swapped out that is used by multiple songs, and ask the user if they want to perform the swap operation for every song in the library that shares that same file so that you can get updated cropping coordinates.

On a side note, the file name does not need to be the same to perform the swap. The reason I said it should be the same in this case is because if all of your other songs are pointing to a file named "FileA.pdf" for example, and you replace "FileA.pdf" with "FileB.pdf" in just one of the songs, it's not going to replace that file for all the other songs. All the other songs will continue to use "FileA.pdf".  If you replace "FileA.pdf" with an updated "FileA.pdf" then all of the songs will detect the changed file (although the full swap procedure will not be performed on all of the songs to update cropping coordinates, but it will handle things like the number of pages in the PDF changing). Sorry if I gave you the impression that the file name had to be the same to use the swapping feature - it doesn't.

I understand you've definitely encountered a lot of problems that you've had to ask a lot of questions about. I think this is mainly due to the way in which you are using MobileSheetsPro. You are more of an advanced user that is accessing functionality that is not as widely used. This is no excuse for software functionality that is not intuitive, it just means that I may not have provided as much guidance in the manual for all of the scenarios you've encountered. I think most users just import PDFs and load setlists from their songs. Most users do not make use of the CSV import functionality. So there is a lot of room for me to improve the manual and provide other means of obtaining answers, like a knowledge base or wiki on the website. Part of this lack of documentation is because I've been working part time on MobileSheetsPro since it was created. It's only this year that I've gone full time, so I will have more time to dedicate to polishing the app, making things more intuitive and providing tutorials and guidance in the app.

While it's not your responsibility to point out things you are think are unintuitive or need fixing, if you would like certain parts of the application improved, please provide specific feedback. I value user feedback very much, and it's what will help the application grow and improve. Things you think are unintuitive may seem perfectly fine to me or others, so there are things I may not even think need fixing. This is part of the problem of the programmer being the UI designer - I don't have input from multiple perspectives and I don't have a UI expert to help guide things. I just do what makes sense to me and then listen to user feedback.

Thanks,
Mike

Mike, I apologize and beg your forgiveness. I just re-read page 39-40 of the Manual and I certainly don't see what I thought I saw last night. Perhaps dealing all day with a contractor and a mortgage refi had fried my brain. By doing it manually (replacing the .PDF manually), if I had manually cropped some of the pages for the new .PDF, will that affect how that page appears (given that I allowed MSP to do the cropping when I imported the original .PDF)? Will I still be ok if all I did was crop out white space and had not enlarged or shrunk the printed portions of the page? [I'm worried that your coordinates assume the page is the original size and calculates from the upper left of the originally-sized page.] If not, it sounds as if I'd better delete all the songs (my last Forum problem) and start over with the new .PDF and the old .CSV.
Again, my apologies for my error and my rudeness.

ADDENDUM: I've confirmed that pages I manually re-cropped no longer display the full printed portion.