Song Export feature?

Hi. Is there a way to export songs lyrics and customised song orders from Presenter? I'm currently looking at Worship Tools as a replacement for our church management software. Our current presentation package doesn't have any way to export, which is going to make it a huge job to set up our full list in Presenter. I'm willing to do that work, but not very happy if I'm then locked in once again to a program without an export feature.

Failing that, is there at least a way to produce a report showing all the songs in our list? I guess these must exist in a database somewhere and so should be reportable.

TIA.

You know, it doesn't matter if your current program can't export song lyrics. That's not what Presenter uses to import lyrics; it imports directly from the program's database. Though it can't do every program; see https://www.worshiptools.com/en-us/docs/22-import-from-other-programs for the list of programs it can import from. If your program is not listed, a work-around is to install OpenLP (free, https://openlp.org/), import your songs into OpenLP (see https://manual.openlp.org/songs.html), then import them into Presenter from OpenLP.

Though you should consider importing each song from CCLI Song Select as it is needed, rather than importing the entire library. That way you're sure that the copyright info is correct, and you don't waste effort with songs that you no longer use. And doing the songs as you need them spreads the work out so there's not so much all at once.

Whatever method you use to import lyrics, you will still need to assign slide labels and format the slides. That doesn't get imported using any method. And importing doesn't bring in the verse order; that has to be done manually, too. This work only has to be done once.

To answer the original question, I don't know of any way in Presenter to export lyrics. You can copy the lyrics used in a service to an external file (using the Print Service option), so that could be used to create a master list if you need one. And I don't know of a way to produce a list of your songs.

Hope this helps!

I think what we're missing is a proper export/import in a Presenter native format (preferably JSON).
Yes, I get that you back everything up, but that does nothing to protect us from operator error.
Anyone with edit permissions could accidentally (or deliberately) trash the whole WorshipTools cloud for a church.
ProPresenter allows export and import of individual slides or whole playlists (with the option of backing up any media too).
We have pretty robust workflows at present. I'm beginning to worry that WorshipTools may not be mature enough to meet our current needs.

Did you answer the post you intended to answer? Your post asked about setting up your song library in Presenter and said nothing about backups. I'm just another user, relaying what I've learned from working with the program and reading posts like this. I have no part in how the program is designed. I started using and learning about Presenter about a year ago; my church's old program is one whose song library can be easily imported. I read about the OpenLP workaround from another post and have enough experience with OpenLP to know that it would work. OpenLP has a long list of programs that it can import from. I imported our song library some time ago but am still setting up songs for use. It takes about 15 minutes per song, now that I know how to do it and what I want the song to look like. I've now set up everything we've used since Jan. 1, 2022. That seems far enough back, so now I just set up any we need that hasn't been set up yet. My church is actually still using the old program, but that 13-year old computer is going to fail sometime, and I want to be ready when it does. (I'm volunteer tech support and substitute projectionist for my small church.) The old program is too old to be put on a new computer. In the meantime I work with the free version of Presenter and continue learning about it.

Oh, now I see that the previous response was by Phil, not the original poster (Marc). Phil, you really had me going there!

Hey Nancy, gotcha!
But would still be great to hear what you make of my comments.
Thanks, Phil

Thanks Nancy and Phil for your comments. We previously used OpenLP and we were able to export/import our song list into our current projection software, from OpenLP. The current software has no export facility and no facility for directly accessing the database, that I'm aware of, so I have no easy way of getting them into either OpenLP (per the suggestion) or Presenter .

We already have things like CCLI song number, copyright details etc. and our preferred song order in the existing software, so it would be nice to be able to just bring them across. My process now is to import into Presenter from Song Select then refer to the order in our existing software to create a custom slide order. This is tedious, but doable. It would just be nice to know that Presenter provided a facility to export, either as a back-up, or to facilitate any possible future migration to another platform. It seems not though.

Thanks again, Marc

The other problem I have is, if there's not at least a way of exporting a list of songs that I've already input into Presenter, it's pretty difficult to know what's missing and still needs to be added (apart from maintaining a separate manual list - which I haven't been doing, unfortunately). Seems to be a pretty simple and obvious feature - somewhere, there is a database of songs that we use, in the order we present them; surely we should be able to get some type of extract from that database.

Marc

Yes, ideally we would just use each song as it comes from SongSelect. However, we do
a lot of work on each song, to format it to our house style (not just lines per screen).

Presenter and Planning have an eclectic and non-overlapping set of ways to edit and format lyrics, with some feature (such as automatic slide breaks or tags) being only available one or the other (not both).

Our house style has been honed over many years in different contexts (several churches, conferences etc).

Our big principles are intelligibility and singability.

We use up to six lines per screen (because people tell us that context is helpful and important).

We use indents and line breaks in a very specific way, that cannot be coded for in any template or filter.

If possible, we aim to have one line per phrase, as it would be sung.

We use left justified with indents, because although centred text might look pretty, it doesn't convey meaning.

Indents help people (e.g. dyslexics like me) to track their way down the screen. Our indents are typically two spaces.

Saviour
he can move the mountains
my God is mighty to save
he is mighty to save

Oh yes, we also like to use British spelling, and Bible compatible forms of capitalisation (e.g. as per the NIVUK 2011).

We also like to remove contractions (with apostrophes), and all but the most essential punctuation (because the layout conveys the sense and phrasing).

SongSelect saves a huge amount if time, and ensures accuracy (and thus that we are using the authorised text).

However, we do a lot of work on the layout, and it is this work that we need to be able to protect from data loss and operator error.

We use a lot of hymns, songs and liturgy. Making unfamiliar content easy to understand, sing and say, without lots of practice, is what drives us. It also needs to look as pretty as possible :)

We have a robust workflow under ProPresenter that has saved us multiple times. It's not clear how we can get the same style, efficiency and safety with Presenter and Planning.

Of course, this forum software doesn't preserve format either. The example in my previous (long) comment reads ...

Saviour
he can move the mountains
my God is mighty to save
he is mighty to save

Here it us again with underbars where the indent spaces should be...

Saviour
__he can move the mountains
____my God is mighty to save
______he is mighty to save

(sigh)

Incidentally, getting that to work in OpenLP required messy macros and CSS hackery :)