All Categories / Editing Your Scores, Organizing Your Music, Working with Bookmarks
About Indexes
When you’re using one long PDF file with multiple pieces within it, bookmarks are an essential part of ensuring that forScore can be at its best, giving you all of the great features you’d get with individual PDF files for each score.
Since adding bookmarks can be a daunting and time-consuming task, use the Indexes feature to create bookmarks from a comma-separated value (CSV) file. To begin, import a CSV file by downloading it through the Services panel, copying it to forScore from another app (or using Drag and Drop), or by adding it to your forScore library from a computer using Apple’s File Sharing panel.
Importing Data From Indexes
While viewing your score, open the Bookmarks menu and tap “Indexes” in the top left-hand corner and choose your CSV file. Values found in each column are listed in the “values” section—tap any of them to assign their information to specific types of forScore metadata, then browse through each record to make sure things look right. The minimum values to create bookmarks are title and starting page; if you want to be able to add individual metadata or add bookmarks to setlists, you’ll also need to set an end page. Set a page offset value, if necessary, and check the thumbnail preview to make sure each bookmark lines up correctly. Skip any header or footer rows as needed, then tap “save” when you’re ready.
If you have multiple CSV files that are structured similarly, you can save and reuse your current value mapping in the future by selecting “default to these settings.” Each time you repeat this process, those settings will be applied by default and you can make any changes, if necessary, before importing the data.
About the CSV Format
CSV files are text documents whose contents follow certain rules. Each line of text (with a newline or carriage return character at the end) contains one or more values separated by a comma. Since newline characters and commas are both used structurally, there are certain rules for how they must be used within values (e.g. if the name of a bookmark is supposed to contain a comma it should be surrounded by double quotes).
In most cases, using a spreadsheet editor is easier and will ensure your data fully conforms to the CSV specification. A CSV file that contains the text shown below, when opened in a program like Excel or Numbers, will be properly formatted and editable without worrying about specific rules or scenarios:
Name,Artist,Year,Start,End
The First Song,”A value, with a comma”,2012,1,2
Another Song,”A value with “”quotes”””,1976,3,5
| Name | Artist | Year | Start | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The First Song | A value, with a comma | 2012 | 1 | 2 |
| Another Song | A value with “quotes” | 1976 | 3 | 5 |
Editing a CSV file directly is as easy as opening a text file, but ensuring that it can be parsed correctly is another story. Whenever possible, we recommend that you rely on spreadsheet editors to do that work for you.