Exporting list of book names

Question

I have received a request for a list of Bible book names for our project. Is there a way to export this from Scripture reference settings? In PT 7, I was able to copy the list and paste it as a table, but in PT 8 I can only select one name at a time.

Answer 1

I can think of a couple of ways that you could do this:

Option 1: Open the BookNames.xml file from your project folder using a right-click and then selecting “Open with…”. Then select Excel (if you have it) and then you might get a dialogue like this:

If you pick “As an XML list” then you should end up with a list in Excel that resembles something like this:

And you should be able to copy-and-paste whichever column that you need.

Option 2: I have a tool/process which helps people generate a Topical Index from a Google Spreadsheet. Part of the set-up for that process requires the Paratext book names in a list - so there is a simple way to upload-&-import them into a Google spreadsheet. If you just use steps 2 and 3 from these instructions, then you will get the same information (as above) in the “Start Here” tab of the Google sheet, from where you can copy-and-paste it elsewhere.

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Comments

Thank you, Mark! This is very helpful.

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Mark+P:

Open the BookNames.xls file

Just want to confirm: Did you mean to write BookNames.xml here?

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Thanks @anon291708 for catching that typo. I’ve just updated it so that someone else coming along later doesn’t get tripped up.

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Does this still work with PT9? When I try the first option and use Open with on the .xml file and select Excel I don't get a dialogue box it just tries to open the file and then says it doesn't recognise the format. If I open it anyway it's just the .xml format - i.e. not that legible/helpful. Same using LibreOffice Calc.

Option 2 I get : The form Upload settings is no longer accepting responses.

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Found a solution myself! For the benefit of anyone else: open Libreoffice Calc/Excel. Open the BookNames.xml from within the program and I got a dialogue box asking how to display the text and then open the file. The result isn't as nice as that shown above (still looks like xlm) but at least the data is aligned in colums and each column can be selected.

A nicer looking version, as above, would still be nice but this is functional.