Drag and Drop: Importing

There are many ways that Drag and Drop helps you work within forScore, but on iPad the gestures don’t just stop there—they also allow you to drag items from one app into another, and today we’ll be looking at all of the ways that can help you with your musical workflow.

Lots of apps allow you to drag files out of them and into any other app that supports that particular file type. The best example is iOS 11’s new Files app, but it’s hardly the only one. Drag a compatible file from one of these apps and drop it into forScore to import it. Under the hood, this works similarly to iOS’ long-standing sharing functions, but with a simpler experience and one big improvement: you can drag multiple files into forScore at once (the old “open in” method only supports one file at a time).

So what can you drag in, and where can you drop it? PDF files, of course, are an obvious one—drag them onto the page to import them and open the last one–and you can do the same with 4SC or text files. You can also drag them into the main menu to import them without opening them, if you prefer. Drag items into the main setlist menu to import the items and create a new setlist with them, drag them onto a setlist to import them and add them to the end of that list, or drop them right into a setlist to import them and then add them to that setlist at that specific point.

It doesn’t stop there, though, because you can also import 4SS, 4SB, and CSV files by dragging them into the setlist menu, the backups panel, and the indexes list (respectively). You can even work with audio files by dragging them into the audio file picker, the recordings list, or right into the audio tab of the metadata panel to import them and associate them with the current score.

These gestures work with Split View and Slide Over, so you can move content between apps with just one easy gesture. Or, if you prefer, you can close apps and open others while still dragging content with one of your fingers and drop the file or files where you need to once it’s on screen. It’s an incredibly powerful way of working and blurs the lines between apps in a way that really puts you in charge of your content.