Import Lyrics From MediaShout?

I am wanting to switch from MediaShout to Presenter, but we've been using MS for years and so have a ton of lyrics saved in it's song directory. I searched in the forums here, and there seemed to be directions on how to import a lyric list using an older version of Presenter, but the new version I've just downloaded doesn't seem to have any "import" feature under the Songs section. Am I missing something somewhere?

My church came from MediaShout 4.5 to Presenter, and Presenter 2025 did a great job of importing the MS 4.5 song library. I think the MS 7.x format is quite a bit different, so it may not know how to import that one. If you're coming from an older MediaShout, then it's probably worth installing Presenter 2025 and trying to import your song library. Presenter 2026 can import from a few programs, but not MediaShout.

You can download Presenter 2025 at https://www.worshiptools.com/en-us/presenter/legacy. Instructions to import the MediaShout song library are at https://www.worshiptools.com/en-us/docs/22-import-from-other-programs. Bear in mind that it only imports the lyrics; you'll still have to set up every song with text formatting, verse labels, and verse order.

If you subscribe to Song Select, it's easy to import the songs you need as you need them. Don't try to do everything at once. Just bring in whatever you need for each service, and eventually you'll have every song. For songs not in Song Select, use MediaShout to export all your songs to a text file. Then you can copy and paste the songs into Presenter. If your church is like mine, then there are many songs in your song library that you no longer sing and don't need to set up.

And be aware that Presenter is in a transition period. Presenter 2025 is the latest stable version, but it will probably be replaced later this year by Presenter 2026, which is currently in beta testing. I do not understand why the developers have made Presenter 2026 the default download, as it still has many bugs.

But there are a lot of differences between the 2025 and 2026 versions, so if you start out with 2025 then you'll have to relearn some things when you switch to 2026. For folks already using Presenter, I strongly recommend staying with 2025 until 2026 is out of beta testing. For folks new to Presenter, it's harder to know what course is best. It probably depends on your team and what you need Presenter to do for you. Presenter is a great program, but this is a difficult time to start using it.

To clarify, if you're coming from MediaShout 4.5, 5.x, or 6.x, you should be able to use Presenter 2025 to import your song library (lyrics only). If you're coming from 7.x, it probably won't work, though you could always try it. Presenter 2026 doesn't have MediaShout as an option for importing lyrics.

In case this dialogue raises concerns about the future, there is no problem using your existing Presenter 2025 song database in Presenter 2026. The songs display with no problem in either version.
Worship Tools state that the song database is backwards compatible, which means that changes made in Presenter 2026 will display in Presenter 2025. I have been reluctant to test this, as we have a production Presenter system, and I don't want to risk affecting it.