Attaching documents to your songs

If you've created documents for your songs in another application, such as a chord chart, lyric sheet or music notation, you can copy those documents into Set List Maker (iOS) or onto your device (Android or Mac) and then attach them to the song records. Then a document button will appear in song lists, which you can tap to view the documents on your device. You can watch a tutorial video, or read on for more details:

Note: You can attach documents in .pdf, .jpg and .txt formats. If you have documents in another format, you can export them as PDFs from the application in which you created them, or batch-convert them using a tool like this one.

Note: Attaching documents is similar to adding lyrics, but not the same. You can use this comparison chart to understand the differences.

  1. Go to the Songs list, click a song title and scroll down to the Documents list, which will show any documents already attached to the song. Then tap the Add Documents button.
    edit documents
  2. This will open a list of all the documents in Set List Maker's data folder. You can tap the buttons at the top of the window to sort them in different ways, or tap the Search button to search for a document. If you want to attach files that you haven't copied into the app yet, you can tap the Import button at the top of the window, then select files from a local folder or cloud storage service, which will copy them into the app's data folder and add them to this list.
  3. Tap the documents you want to attach to your song; a checkbox will appear next to each document you've selected. When you're done selecting documents, tap Save.
    choose documents
  4. Your selected documents will be added to the Documents list on the song edit page. If needed, you can rearrange this list by dragging the "grip" area to the right of each document. The first document in the list will be the default document throughout the app. When you leave the song, your changes will be saved automatically.
    edit documents
  5. On iOS and Android 10+, your documents will be stored within Set List Maker's data folder. You can optionally copy documents there using the Import button at the top of the Documents list. On iOS, you can also copy them using the Share or Copy To function from another app, the iOS Files app, iTunes File Sharing on older Mac versions or the Finder on Mac Catalina and later. On Android, you might be able to copy them using the Android Files app or another file management app, but Google is phasing out this capability.
    file sharing
  6. On Android 9 and earlier or macOS, apps don't have a designated data folder. Instead, you can create a folder anywhere on your device, copy your documents there, then select that directory in Settings > General Settings > Defaults > Document Directory. If you need to move or rename that directory in the future, or the device's directory structure changes through OS updates, you can update that setting and any document links will be preserved.

After you've attached a document to a song, you should see a document button Document button appear when you view the song. Tapping the button opens the default document, which is the first one in the list for that song (unless you change Settings > General Settings > Defaults > Document). If you have attached more than one document, you can tap and hold the button until a submenu appears, then tap the desired document name.
documents list

When you view your document from the Songs list or from a song in a show, you can use the following features:

  • Swipe up or down to scroll through long documents, or tap the top or bottom third of the document to jump a screen at a time.
  • If an arrow appears in the document icon, tap it to begin auto-scrolling.
  • Tap the left or right third of the document to switch to adjacent documents, if multiple documents are attached to the same song.
  • Pinch to zoom the document in or out.
  • If you're showing a document over the top of your song layout, double-tap the center of the document to hide it again.
    document hotspots
  • Tap the triangle icon in the top right corner to show the document toolbar, which has buttons to...
    document toolbar
    • Hide the document viewer, if showing above your layout (not pictured here)
    • Switch to the previous document, if multiple documents are attached to the same song
    • Switch to the next document, if multiple documents are attached to the same song
    • Start or stop auto-scrolling
    • Save the zoom position after pinch-zooming the document
    • Reset to the default zoom position
    • Add a marker at the current scroll position
    • Add or edit annotations
    • Switch between Fit To Height and Fit To Width
  • When clicking the Annotate button, the document toolbar switches to the annotation toolbar, which has buttons to...
    annotation toolbar
    • Draw with a pen
    • Draw with a highlighter
    • Add a text box
    • White out a portion of the document
    • Erase annotations (double-tap to erase all)
    • Undo edits
    • Redo edits
    • Save your annotations
    • Revert to the last-saved annotations
  • While editing annotations, you can scroll the document with a two-fingered drag. Or if you have an iPad and an Apple Pencil and you turn on Only Draw With Apple Pencil in the iOS Settings app, you can draw with the pencil and scroll with one finger. If you have an Apple Pencil 2, you can open and close the annotation toolbar by double-tapping the pencil.
  • To add markers, scroll the document to the desired position, then click Add a Marker in the tools menu and enter a name for the marker. You can also click an existing marker to rename or delete it. When your document contains markers, all the Next Page and Previous Page functions (including the on-screen hotspots, automation events and app control actions) will jump to the marker positions instead of the page positions.

Here are some additional notes about attaching documents:

  • The Android app can invert PDFs to match the dark color theme using Settings > Appearance > Invert PDF Colors. The other platforms can only show PDFs in their natural color. To show them as white text on a black background, you would have to change the colors within your original document and re-export it as a PDF (or use the built-in Lyrics field instead).
  • To display documents correctly, Set List Maker needs to know the size of your documents. You can tell Set List Maker whether you're using Letter or A4 documents in your database with the Settings > General Settings > Document Size option. Set List Maker doesn't support a mixture of Letter and A4 documents in the same database and doesn't support custom page sizes. Some functions won't work correctly if your document sizes don't match the Document Size setting.
  • Set List Maker also needs to know the orientation of your documents. It assumes documents are portrait oriented, but if you have any landscape documents, you can specify that: from the main menu, go to the Documents page, tap the name of a landscape document and select the Landscape option.
  • You can display your documents in two columns if you edit your layout, tap the document viewer, tap its options button in the top right corner, and set Content to 2 Columns. Then open the document toolbar and click the Fit to Height button to display two pages side by side. Or you can set the number of columns for individual documents with the Presentation setting on the document edit page.
  • If you have a document that you want to access from any song, such as a page of audience banter ideas, you can turn on the Pinned To All Songs option on its edit page. Then the document will always be available from the document button as if it is attached to every song. If you include the Multiple Document Buttons in your layout, you can set that to show only the song documents, only the pinned documents or both (the default is both).
  • If you are using an external display with your device, that display will mirror your entire screen by default. Alternatively, you can set Settings > General Settings > External Display to Document, and then the external display will only show the document when you view it from within a show. Your layout does not need to include a document viewer to use this feature, so you could view a list-only layout or other information on your device display and a document on your external display.
  • On Android 10+, you can no longer select a custom location to store your attached document and recording files, but you can still use a removable SD card if you have one installed. Turn on Settings > General Settings > Use Removable Storage, and then Set List Maker will save imported files to and load files from the /Android/data/com.arlomedia.setlistmaker/files folder on the card.
  • If you export your database to another device, Set List Maker will copy the file name (iOS) or file path (Android) for each attached document, but will not copy the file itself. If you install the document with the same location on the other device, the document icon will appear for display on that device. If the document icon does not appear after importing, please be sure that the document is available on the other device with exactly the same name. On Android, only the part of the file path after the Settings > General Settings > Default > Document Directory needs to match. (If you switch to BandHelper, it will copy your document files to all the devices in your band.)
  • You can email or print individual documents after clicking a document name in the Documents list. You can email or print a collection of documents by selecting a show or smart list and clicking the Share Songs button.
  • To rename a document copied into the iOS app, tap the Documents menu item in your database, then tap the document name, then enter a new name. All the songs to which this document is attached will be updated with the new name.
  • To delete a document copied into the iOS app, tap the Documents menu item in your database, then tap the document name, then tap the Delete button. Documents are shared across databases, so this will delete the document from all your databases and detach it from all the songs to which it is attached. Before deleting, you can review the list of songs below the edit fields that shows all the songs to which the document is attached.
  • Documents that are not attached to any songs in your current database will appear in a faded style in the Documents list. However, these documents might still be attached to songs in other databases.
  • If you're adding your document to a new song, you can add the document before entering a song title and the song title will be automatically set to the document filename.
  • The iOS "Open in..." command doesn't work in the Photos app in iOS. However, you can save JPEGs to your photo library, then tap the Photos button in the Add Documents window in Set List Maker, and select the photo from the photo library.
  • If you have created your document by scanning a piece of paper, the file size will be relatively large, which will make the document open slowly when you view it within the app. The best documents are created from an electronic source such as a Word or Pages document. If you don't have an electronic source, you can experiment with your scanning settings to minimize your file sizes. Most documents can be scanned in black and white, with 100-150 dpi for regular displays or 200 dpi for Retina displays.