1/8/2009 3:55:30 PM

This may have been asked before (maybe by me!), but is there any problem with just deleting songs from the song folder and then re-indexing? I have accumulated a lot of songs that are no longer needed and I would like to delete them quickly and easily. Deleting in the song panel is a headache since the cursor reverts to the beginning of the list each time a song is deleted, thus requiring scrolling down to the previous location (not doing this is on the wish list). Also, as far as I can tell, only one song at a time can be deleted. Just going through the song folder, marking all unwanted songs, deleting, and then re-indexing is infinitely faster -- IF it is safe as far as SSP is concerned. Anyone familiar with this?

1/9/2009 10:49:21 AM

Yes you can do this with no problems at all - I do this all the time and have not had a problem yet although I don't know what would happen if SSP was trying to display the same song as you are trying to delete (I don't think it would cause any major problems though).

1/10/2009 9:02:07 AM

Jem, thanks for the advice. I have a couple of further questions. I have several (20 or so) songs prefixed with "user hymns." I have no idea how that happened and periodically a song is added to that category - unbeknownst to me. (1) Can I just remove the "user hymns" prefix and re-index? (2) Also, is there a way to keep any more songs from being added to that category; that is, how can I eliminate the category?

1/14/2009 4:05:50 PM

I will try and deal with the questions individually.

1.) I think that this may be best done from within SSP (I haven't tried doing it outside of SSP although as long as you change the prefix to whatever it is you want it to be then it shouldn't be a problem as long as you keep the name in the right format).
To do this from within SSP you want to go to the "Songs" tab and select "All Songs", now click where it says "Filter" (with a double down arrow next to it) to drop down a load of boxes, In the "Collection" drop down box you need to select (in your case anyway) "user hymns", Now click on "Apply Filter" and you should be left with only your 20 or so problem songs showing. If you then go and edit each of the affected songs and change the "Collection" under the "general" tab to what ever you want it to be and then save it you should find that will then sort out your prefix.

You may by now have got the idea (if you didn't know anyway) that the file name contains which collection the song belongs to in it.

2.) I haven't found a way to remove or correct an unwanted collection but I will continue searching and see if I can find which file it is hidden in.

P.S. It might be an idea to manually copy your data base to any other pcs - I assume that you have a "master" database that gets copied any way in which case it would be a good idea to wipe out the databases on the other pcs and copy the master one on again from scratch.

Hope that helps.

1/14/2009 5:09:15 PM

The answer to number 2 is that the Collections list is "Self Cleaning". By that I mean that when you have eliminated all of the instances of a particular label and restart SSP, the label will no longer appear in the drop down list.

Of course if someone imports a song with the label or adds it again it will reappear.

Hope this helps...

1/15/2009 7:40:29 AM

Thanks, George & Jem. I now feel a little more comfortable messing around with the songs folder. I periodically make a backup copy of it for safe-keeping. I use SSP to keep things up-to-date on a week-by-week basis, but I think that Windows is probably easier when there is a large number of changes to be made. By the way, George, the problem of duplicate entries seems to have been solved as I haven't noticed any in the last couple of months. Thanks again.