[ChrisW]

Hello,

I'm trying to build my library with the help of CSV files. I have a large number of PDFs that contain the parts for wind orchestra. Via a CSV file it's easy to specify the title, page ranges and other attributes. Is there any documentation for the CSV field names available?
I found a sample gsheet with an "instrument" column, that would suit my need for specifying part name (e.g. trombone, trumpet, saxophone, ...). Unfortunately using this column in a CSV does not do the trick, because this column won't be imported ... and there's no such "instrument" field in the app as well (???).
In principle, I could (mis-)use another field for this information. But it would be better not to do that.

Another "issue" is how to update library data when a PDF has changed (songs or parts added) and the CSV is updated to match the PDF. Can it be re-imported with deletion resp. replacement of old entries in the songlist that were created with the former version of the CSV?

Thank you for any hints!
Christian

[Zubersoft]

Here are all of the recognized field names:

pages
title
artists
albums
genres
composers
source types
sourcetypes
custom groups
customgroups
keys
signatures
custom
custom2
tempos
difficulty
duration
rating
years
sort title
sorttitle
audio files
audiofiles
pages
keywords
setlists
collections
page_order
source_types
custom_groups

There is no instrument field at the moment, but you can use custom group or source type for that.

You can't currently reimport CSV files to update existing songs in the library - that's on my list of things to do. You'll have to either delete songs and reimport, or manually update the songs. Be careful with importing a new version of a PDF that is shared by many songs, as a problem will be created if the page numbers no longer correctly line up. I am also planning on adding an option to not share a single PDF when using the CSV import feature and instead generating a PDF for each song that is selected.

Mike

[itsme]

If you rename "custom group" to "instrument" than that CSV column should be imported there.
CSV columns that don't exist in the database are ignored by MobileSheets without doing any harm. This is nice for additional info in the CSV, e.g. I often keep an extra column "startpage" / "PDFPage" to simplify switching the sort order between A-Z and by page (for editing the CSV outside of MobileSheets)

[ChrisW]

[quote pid="47253" dateline="1706604605"]
Hello Mike,

thank you for your answer. In the meantime I found, that I can rename "custom_groups" to "Instrument" in the settings which is sufficient

You can't currently reimport CSV files to update existing songs in the library - that's on my list of things to do.

This would be very useful. For now (I'm just starting) it's more for correcting import errors. Assume, you have a PDF with 20 parts in it and there's is a wrong pagenumber. A re-import generates 20 additional entries in the songlist. So, how to get rid of the duplicates and wrong parts?

Be careful with importing a new version of a PDF that is shared by many songs, as a problem will be created if the page numbers no longer correctly line up.

What happens when a PDF is edited? Let's say there were new pages added at the end of the document. Will already added songs/parts be correct? What about comments/annotations? Still in the right place?

I am also planning on adding an option to not share a single PDF when using the CSV import feature and instead generating a PDF for each song that is selected.

For now, I don't let mobilesheets copy the original files because I can't see an advantage in having duplicate files. Therefore I consider the CSV file as a pre-database definition of what's in the files. Some of the files may be updated or changed ... with the need for a re-import of a new CSV-definition. I understand that a re-import maybe quite tricky if one wants to obtain existing information and avoid duplicates, at the same time.


Mike
[/quote]

[Geoff Bacon]

I consider ..csv files suitable for large pdfs that are not subject to change e.g something you buy.
This means that once set up correctly, you won't need to update any of the entries so any annotations are preserved.

When creating/importing a .csv, it helps if you use one of the fields to identify the songbook. You can then easily filter on this field to identify the songs to be deleted prior to reimporting. Deleting the entry destroys it's annotations.

One of the groups I attend has a large pdf songbook and this probably changes every month. Deleting/reimporting this book would lose any annotations that I've made. To get around this, I print the individual songs to a pdf writer (Cutepdf) and import the songs individually. This allows individual songs to be switched while maintaining their annotations.
This works well as I only have one such file; as you have several such files, you might have to mix and match.

There are several .csv files posted on the forum so check to see if any cover your files 

Geoff

[itsme]

Printing to a PDF printer works fine, of course. But to split a large PDF into several separate files there are more convenient alternatives, e.g. PDFSaM https://pdfsam.org/download-pdfsam-basic/ or PDF24 https://www.pdf24.org

You can handle a large PDF that changes every now and then if you manage the files yourself, search the forum. But you should understand what happens - mainly that annotations are stored in the MobileSheets database and are attached to certain pages in the PDF.
If you change that PDF yourself and just add pages at the end you can extend the CSV and import only the new songs by selecting them in the CSV import dialog without affecting annotations that are already in the pages at the beginning.
Make sure to have a working backup if you start experimenting!

[McAroni]

I do a similar thing with Brass Band Arrangements. My Custom Group is renamed to Instruments.
Inside of this Group there are my Instruments: 001 Soprano, 002 Solo Cornet..... and so on.
i upload an sample csv for one piece so you can see what i mean.



  Brass Band.csv (Size: 1.83 KB / Downloads: 4)

[Zubersoft]

To get rid or duplicates and/or wrong parts, you'd have to long press one, tap each one you want to delete then tap "Delete" in the action bar at the top of the screen.

Mike

[ChrisW]

To get rid or duplicates and/or wrong parts, you'd have to long press one, tap each one you want to delete then tap "Delete" in the action bar at the top of the screen.

Mike

@Mike
this can be a quite annoying task, especially if the metadata for the imported songs is not sufficient to distinguish old from new. In this case one has to open all songs and see which one is the old.

@all
Thank you for your comments an ideas how to deal with it. 

Best regards
Christian