[Frank Cox]

After buying the program a year or more back, I'm finally getting around to actually using Mobilesheets and now that I've started with it I'm wondering why I didn't put in the effort to get going with it earlier.  

Anyway, I added ten pdf with about four thousand lead sheets to my song list and tried the backup function and got a 128mb backup file out of it.

When I started the program I told it I didn't want it to make its own copy of the pdf files because I sometimes view them with other pdf readers too.

The size of the backup file makes me wonder if it's including the actual pdf files along with the mobilesheets-specific data in the backup?  If so, that's not needed in a situation like mine where the actual music files are managed separately from the mobilesheets program and all I really need or want to back up is the songlist and whatnot that make up the actual mobilesheets installation.

I had thought that I could set up my songs and setlists on my tablet and then just copy the backup file to my phone and have an identical setup there to review when I'm not in front of my piano.  But now I'm wondering if that's the right way to accomplish that goal, or if there's a different or better way to synchronize the setup between my two devices.

Ideally, I'd like to have a backup file of the mobilesheets setup that I can just keep on my fileserver with all of my other files and materials and be in a position to restore everything painlessly if something bad happens to my tablet.  But having a backup that contains everything including the actual pdf files seems a bit wasteful of space when the pdf files already exist separately.

Maybe I'm just missing something and not understanding how this is supposed to work.  Again, even though I've had the mobilesheets program lying around for some time I'm really just getting started with it now.

[itsme]

Probably you should manage your files yourself

On Android set "Let Mobile Sheets Manage My Files" to OFF and specify an MSP folder
On Win10 set the MSP folder to a folder outside of
c:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Packages\41730Zubersoft.MobileSheets_ys1c8ct2g6ypr\LocalState\
In both cases store all your files in subfolders of the MSP folder.
I use a subfolder of my local GoogleDrive folder to make GoogleDrive synchronize my fakebooks to several Win10 devices

see
https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum...p?tid=5098
and several other forum threads

[Zubersoft]

You will also want to enable Settings->Storage->Expose Database on Android so that mobilesheets.db is copied either to the storage location (if it's on internal storage), or /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.zubersoft.mobilesheetspro/files. If you backup mobilesheets.db, that's what actually contains your entire library. The database just points to the other files in the storage location or elsewhere on the device, so that may be the only thing you need to back up. Just be aware that there isn't an option at the moment to export the settings, so you would have to redo all of the settings across the application. That's one benefit of using a backup file. I will add the ability to import/export settings as soon as I have bandwidth for it.

Mike

[Frank Cox]

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by "there isn't an option... to export the settings".

Is it that mobilesheets.db contains the songs and pointers to where each of the songs exists on the device, but stuff like crop settings for individual songs and setlists and whatnot are not (yet) part of that database?

If I click that button to expose the database is it going to move the existing database or will I have to start over?  (It wouldn't be the end of the world if I do have to start over, I suppose,  since I've really just got going with this anyway.)

If, either currently or eventually, mobilesheets.db contains all of the program-specific information then it would be very easy to port one's existing setup onto a new device by copying all the pdf files to the device first, then copying mobilesheets.db onto it and job done.

The only issue I can see coming out of that would be file paths.  If my pdf files on device A are at location x/y/z and the pdf files on device B are on a/b/c then there would have to be a way to update the database to correct the paths listed in the database to match the new setup.

[itsme]

Don't worry, crop info, setlists, albums, collections and so on are song data that are stored in the MSP database. What Mike means with settings are program settings like language, tab settings and so on.
Regarding file paths: MSP stores "relative file paths" for files within the MSP folder, using subdirectories is fine. Only files from outside the MSP folder are copied to the root of the MSP folder during import. This is necessary to allow restoring a backup in a way that everything works as before. This is also the reason why backups contain all the song files.
This is why I recommended "store all your song files within the MSP folder"
Doing that allows copying just MSP databases between different devices, even between Android and Win10 devices. It will work if you take care of the same file and folder structure on every device. I do that all the time and I know of several users with a similar workflow.

[Frank Cox]

That's a very interesting bit of information indeed.

Thanks!

Edited to add:
Okey dokey, I've been doing a bit of experimenting here and I think I see what's going on here but if one of you fine folks who know more about this than I do could confirm my understanding I'd really appreciate it.

I made a directory in my android "home directory", set mobilesheets to expose the database and set the storage location to the directory that I had just created.  A "copying files" window showed up and when it was done I have three files in that directory: mobilesheets.db, stamplists.json and user_filters.xml.

Viewing the sqlite database I see that the pdf files are all listed with their full paths.

Google found a previous thread in the forum archive that addresses the file paths here:

https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum...-7570.html

So if I understand what's going on here correctly, as of now I can archive my mobilesheets setup by copying mobilesheets.db, stamplists.json and user_filters.xml to some backup media, and if I reinstall mobilesheets on a different device in the future I can simply copy those three files to a directory on that device, "set storage location" to that directory, and run the "fix file paths" routine to update the paths in the database to match whatever the location of my sheet music directory is on the new device.

If so, then that's exactly what I was looking for.

[Zubersoft]

Frank,

Your understanding is mostly correct, although you would want to change the storage location first before copying your files to the directory. The reason is that MobileSheetsPro creates a mobilesheets.db when it first loads and if you copy the files to the storage location you want to use before switching MobileSheetsPro to that storage location, MobileSheetsPro would then overwrite the files you copied. 

If you go to the main application settings screen, you will see sections for library settings, display settings, touch & pedal settings, etc. Those are the settings that won't be copied across devices that you would have to set up on each device if you don't use a library backup file.

If you expect to be using devices that have different storage locations (i.e. an SD card on each device), then it is strongly recommended that you import your files from within the storage location. If you do this, file paths in the database will be stored relative to the storage location. This will make it very easy to copy your directory structure between devices. If you have files that you import from outside the storage location, and you have unchecked the option to let MobileSheets manage your files, MobileSheetsPro will store an absolute file path for that. If that absolute file path points to storage that will be different between devices, such as a removable SD card, then when you transfer the library over, it will be unable to load the files. Furthermore, the "Fix Broken File Paths" utility may or may not be able to fix this depending on whether MobileSheetsPro is able to freely search through the storage to find the files. You could then have to manually fix the broken file paths by substituting one file path for another or using the swap file feature. Just to be clear - if you import your files from within the storage location folder, you will never have to use the fix broken file paths feature when copying your folders between devices because everything should just work.

Mike

[Frank Cox]

Thanks!

I'm not a huge fan of moving my sheet music directory on the Android tablet because I have accumulated a lot of bookmarks within the pdf viewer that I use.  Android doesn't support symbolic links on internal storage; otherwise that would be the quick and easy fix but that's not to be either.

However, it appears that the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen is that I would have to load mobilesheets.db into sqlite and do a global replace on the portion of the filename field that changed, assuming that it did change which would by no means be a foregone conclusion.

But it appears that this is a solved problem anyway.  I keep a backup of mobilesheets.db and can restore that to any new device and all I need to do is modify the file paths if needed.

[itsme]

@Frank: helpful tools to manipulate the MSP were written by Sciurius
see https://github.com/sciurius/MSPro-Tools

@Mike:
"If you have files that you import from outside the storage location, and you have unchecked the option to let MobileSheets manage your files, MobileSheetsPro will store an absolute file path for that."
Is that behaviour different on Win10 and Android? I noticed on Win10 that MSP copies the imported PDF fakebook into the MSP folder during a CSV from outside.

[Zubersoft]

MobileSheets on Windows 10 can't point to files outside the storage location - it's a restriction for UWP applications. There is a way where I can persist access to a file that a user selected with the Microsoft Open File dialog, but this is limited to around 1000 files before Windows denies the request, and I didn't want to have to mess around with that, so I require that all files are under the storage location.

Mike