PDFs to MobileSheets (Windows and Android)

[lmederos]

Hi everyone

I recently got MobileSheets, and I like it so far, but there are a couple of things I'm confused about.  Could someone help me?


1.  How do you "separate" songs that in a single PDF with multiple songs in it?  I want to see/work with the individual songs, not the whole songbook.  I guess I could split the PDF but checking if there is an easier way.

2.  How does the database work?  When I import a PDF, I have the option to generate .png files (which would help for question #1 I guess).   I see it creates folders for each of the PDFs and then places the PDF there --- but is just the storage; I don't see the database file anywhere (I selected the db storage folder to be one that gets backed up to my NAS server, not the default).

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Roger Brenizer]

Hi everyone

I recently got MobileSheets, and I like it so far, but there are a couple of things I'm confused about.  Could someone help me?


1.  How do you "separate" songs that in a single PDF with multiple songs in it?  I want to see/work with the individual songs, not the whole songbook.  I guess I could split the PDF but checking if there is an easier way.

2.  How does the database work?  When I import a PDF, I have the option to generate .png files (which would help for question #1 I guess).   I see it creates folders for each of the PDFs and then places the PDF there --- but is just the storage; I don't see the database file anywhere (I selected the db storage folder to be one that gets backed up to my NAS server, not the default).

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Hi Luis,

I use PDF24 Creator.

https://www.pdf24.org/

[frajag]

HI:
There is an easier way. I believe that you want to have a song from a book with multiple songs. Make sure your computer has a PDF printer installed. Open the book in your PDF reader, find the song (you need to observe the page numbers), then print to the PDF printer. Save the output (give it an appropriate filename) in an appropriate location and folder. In case this is confusing look here:
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/development/resources/curriculum_archive/printing.pdf
Windows 10 has a built-in Microsoft print to PDF that you can use. I found that it sometimes created files that were not readable. There are free alternatives e.g. Cute PDF or Bullzip PDF

[lmederos]

Thanks for the replies.

So it looks like I need separate the pages for the songs I'm interested into their individual PDFs, correct?

Thanks

[frajag]

Correct Luis.
Once you tell it the pages to print, you have a single song. The process is quite easy and after a few tries you will be an expert!

[Roger Brenizer]

The process is very similar using PDF24 Creator.  I've used printing a PDF file from a book before, but after using PDF Creator for so many years I still prefer using this method.

In addition, PDF24 has multiple tools you may find useful in manipulating your files further.

We all have our own ways of doing things and there is no right or wrong way, so we should all do things in a manner that works best for us.  What really matters is the result we achieve. 

[Tony09]

Imederos

This post from Muddy might help https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php?topic=57760.0

Tony

[pmahl]

Hi there

In my opinion Mobilesheets itself offers the easiest way to do that.

Extract from the manual:
THE SNIPPET TOOL
The snippet tool is a very useful feature for quickly cutting out a section of a song with
which to create a new song. It can be accessed by clicking on the popup menu in the
bottom left corner of the song overlay. If you happen to be using a PDF that contains
numerous songs, the snippet tool can be used to break up that PDF into a series of songs
which all share the same file.
This dialog lets you enter a name for the new song that will be created as well as a range of
pages to use from the current song. The page range that is entered must be between 1 and
the value shown next to "Pages in File". The range does not need to be continuous – you
can enter "1, 3, 5-7, 9" if you only wanted those specific pages. The "Copy Metadata"
checkbox determines whether the new song will be created with the same metadata
(artists, albums, genres, etc) as the current song. Likewise, "Copy Annotations" determines
if the current song's annotations are copied into the new song. If "Load Snippet After
Creation" is checked, the new song will be immediately loaded into the song display after
creation. If "Edit Snippet After Creation" is checked, the song editor will be displayed for the
new song.

Peter

[acparker]

Although I generally create a separate pdf for each song, you don't have to do it that way.

After you create a new song entry, you can go to the files tab, select the 'book' pdf, and then specify what page(s) belong to that Song. 

Incidentally, you can repeat page numbers.  For example, if you have a repeat that goes back a page, you can specify pages 1,2,1,2,3. Or perhaps a coda?  1,2,3,1,2,4.  Then each page can be separately annotated.  The first instance of page 1 can be annotated one way, the second instance of page 1 a different way, and so on.  Handy for where I've had to add extra verses to songs.

Have a great day!

Adam

[lmederos]

Thanks to all of you for help!

I'm trying the different options provided here.

[lmederos]

Just posting here to report something I noticed.

Both methods suggested for clipping (snippets or loading from PDF bookmarks) work well.  The songs are correctly imported and these methods are both time savers.

Here is the problem (may not be a problem for some of you): 

Let's say you have a large PDF with many songs (e.g. 20MB file size).  And let's say of that PDF with say 75 songs, you want 15 of them.  When the snippet is created or the bookmark is loaded, MobileSheets creates a folder for each song where it can go look for the PDF content.   

But in each of those folders for each song, MobileSheets does not store the 3, 4,5 pages for the individual song.  It actually stores the *WHOLE ORIGINAL* PDF.   So now it is storing 15 (songs) x 20MB ---->> 300MB total!

Although I dread separating each individual song into its own PDF, I can see that my hard drive will be consumed pretty quickly otherwise.  I also suspect the MobileSheets database itself will be smaller and the response faster.

Thanks!

[acparker]

@ lmederos

That's true if you set Mobilesheets to manage your files.  However, you can change it so that you manage your own storage.  If I understand the manual correctly, then it wouldn't copy the whole Pdf, but rather just make a reference in the database.

I didn't want the hassle of creating and managing the file system, so I went the first route.  And I found that creating a separate pdf for each song was simple enough ... if tedious at the beginning when I had a lot of songs to do.  I'm using windows 10, which has a "Microsoft Print to PDF" native under the printers.  So my procedure to grab several songs out of a pdf was to flip to the song in question, get the page number(s).  Print those pages using the Print to PDF, saving it in Google Drive.  After all the songs were printed this way, I would go to tablet, and import from Google Drive.  I could then select all the songs I printed out, and import them.  I use the 'Album' tag to record which book I took them from, in case I want to refer back at some later date.

Hope this helps!

Adam

[lmederos]

...and for those interested, Adobe Acrobat has a feature to split the files by bookmark

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2016/04/21/hidden-gems-in-acrobat-dc-splitting-apart-pdf-files

[aprilla]

...and for those interested, Adobe Acrobat has a feature to split the files by bookmark

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2016/04/21/hidden-gems-in-acrobat-dc-splitting-apart-pdf-files

I usually do it the Print way, using Current page or typing in the page numbers, clicking Print (to PDF) and typing the title. I did use the bookmark way (many years ago), titling each bookmark, it worked but whatever I used didn't title the created PDFs and renaming the files after was more a chore for me than the way I ended up doing it. But - I wasn't using Acrobat. Does Acrobat name the PDF according to the bookmark name? That would be very nice.

[lmederos]

Does Acrobat name the PDF according to the bookmark name? That would be very nice.

Alas, sadly no.  Discovered that afterwards.