[MB10]

Hi Lawrie,

thanks for clarifying! Then I would just state again (not for you but for readers who may come across this) that your questions/requests/comments do not have anything to do with the topic of this thread which is to have multiple songs from the same library open at the same time or to at least change between them quickly

Concerning your way of organizing songs: I have to say that I do not quite agree in two important points - I would not want to disable the option to let MobileSheets manage my files and I have all my music (for different groups that may play the same song in different arrangements) in the same library. I just want to elaborate a little more on my reason for this - not to say my opinion or philosophy was better than yours or any other, but because I think it is useful to learn about the possibilities: I think everything you need can be achieved by different collections. My list in your case would look like this:
Collections inside MobileSheets:
Band1 - Trom1
Band1 - Trom2
Band1 - Tuba
Band2 - Trom1
...
I could even add another collection where I have all the sheets for Band1 for all the instruments but as you said mostly it would only be necessary to have all the sheets for 1 instrument in 1 band at the same time. I also think that the total number of collections would not be that big that it is impossible to keep the overview of it especially because you could just scroll the list as it is sorted first by Band then by Instrument.
This would allow to have instant access to all pieces for all instruments in all ensembles at the same time - imagine having to switch to Trombone 2 in rehearsal. Or having a colleague that plays in multiple bands with you and after rehearsal for Band1 you want to talk about something from Band2 with him/her - I imagine it being too complicate to load an entire different library in these cases.

Concerning library management: I think your philosophy is to have just one place that is at the same time accessed by MobileSheets and is there for you to say share a song with someone or replace a pdf. As various posts in this forum show, it is often not good to "disturb" MobileSheets by changing things via the folder structure and not "telling" it about it. Therefore even if it annoys me to have a double structure I activated MobileSheets to organize itself and have my files in a separate directory on my computer. There I think the filesizes should not matter too much because there is more than enough space on my harddrive (on phones or tablets it might be different). So my conclusion is to do everything I can directly in MobileSheets and only for cases of sharing files etc. I use my computer in the different directory.

Again, I don't think there is a right or wrong way to setup MobileSheets but I enjoy discussing its options with others and hope that this post might be interesting to you or anyone else. Having gone against my own first paragraph: If any of the moderators thinks that there is now way too much discussion in this thread about an entirely different topic you can perhaps move the last 6 replies to a separate thread about changing libraries.

Cheers,
Malte

[Lawrie]

<snip>
I think everything you need can be achieved by different collections. My list in your case would look like this:
Collections inside MobileSheets:
Band1 - Trom1
Band1 - Trom2
Band1 - Tuba
Band2 - Trom1
...
<snip>

Sorry about continuing the hijack...

The problem I see with having MSP manage files is the need to have really, really complex naming conventions.  The way I understand it, every PDF would end up in the same directory so numbers from different bands would also have to have the bands name in the filename - or some other group identifier...

Having been an IT pro (now retired) for more decades than I care to remember, logical management of directory and file structures is ingrained.  I've ALWAYS hated the Apple approach of insulating the user from the file system for this reason.

I haven't finished loading everything yet and I'm already talking 1800 files (individual PDFs)...

My approach works for me - makes management of changes and additions easy via my PC - and to load the database I only need to batch load a particular subdirectory structure, not sort through thousands of files in a single directory.

Of course YMMV.

It's also true I might have misunderstood the MSP file management philosophy, but the repeated warnings about unique filenames makes me confident I have it figured out.

[MB10]

Thanks! The point about forcing different filenames definitely makes sense - depends on where it is more tedious to sort out having different versions of the same song and I understand your approach to it. For my cases it is practical enough to name the songs in these cases by bands ("piece_band1.pdf" and "piece_band2.pdf" or something like that).

If is good to hear that it works well for you to batch import complete directories of files. I might try out this approach in the future if I get around the intricacies of automatically filling in the fields in MobileSheets