Guides

Updated in Logos 8, Guides now allow you to launch individual sections of a given Guide, like the Journals or Ancient Literature sections. You can tailor any premade guide to your needs or use the Guide Editor to create custom guides.

We've prepared a variety of articles and videos on using Guides here:

Feel free to use this forum thread to post feedback and questions.

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Comments

PetahChristian

In Logos 7, I had a number of specific passage and bible word study guides that I had saved. They would show up under the Guides window, and I could pull up my previous study of a passage or word.

In Logos 8, I can't find those saved guides. Now when I do a word study for a word I had previously saved, it runs a new guide for that word, instead of bringing up my previous results.

I would star commentaries that had valuable insight about a passage, and feel like I've lost all that work.

Are we no longer meant to save guides, or access guides we've saved?

Dennis Phelps

This is a good question and important issue.

Adam Borries (Logos)

Petah, thanks for your question. In short, this is correct: saved guides are not a feature of Logos 8. But don't worry, we still have the data from your starred commentaries and guides notes, and we plan to bring them back to guides in a more integrated way.

What is a saved guide? (Let me just recap here, because a lot of people might not know.) In Logos 4-7, after you open a Passage Guide (or Bible Word Study, etc.), if you make any changes to the guide, Logos would save it for reference later. Examples of such changes:

Add, delete, or rearrange guide sections
Take a note on a guide section
Star or remove a commentary to mark it as helpful/unhelpful for the passage

You could find these saved guides in the Guides menu, and if you happen to open Passage Guide (etc) later that matched or intersected the same passage range as a saved guide, Logos would show you changes you made in the earlier session. The idea behind saved guides was "save my research on this passage/word/topic, so I can find it when I come back to study it again later."

In practice, though, very few people used this functionality. In fact, many users didn't even understand what those saved guides in the right-hand side were for, or how they were different from opening a new guide instance on the (much smaller, but much more used) left side of the menu. Some users even actively deleted their saved guides, just to "clear the clutter." Finally (and this is where you can help me), I'd say that even for the few users who intentionally use saved guides, they are a bit clunky because they are so isolated. Which passages do I have notes on? I don't know, because the only way to find those guide notes is to open my saved guides and see if they have notes. Which commentaries do I star most often as helpful? Same problem.

What are we going to do instead of saved guides? We think we can better serve these needs with other mechanisms.

Guide notes will get imported to the new Notes tool. They will be browsable in the tool, anchored to both the guide section and the passage, and searchable, making them much more discoverable.
Commentary stars will likely be migrated to Favorites, so you can see them all in one place.

And already, add/remove/reorder guide sections modifies the guide itself in Logos 8 -- a capability that has been around since Logos 4 with the Guide Template Editor, but the new functionality is much more intuitive.

I'm very interested to hear your feedback on this proposal. And again, I want to reiterate that your data is safe, even if it isn't visible right now. If you need access to the information in your saved guides immediately, before we can develop these new features, please reach out to me directly.

PetahChristian

Thank you, Adam, for sharing this insight about the direction that Logos is taking.

I can recognize how transitioning from saved guides would the user experience less confusing and/or cluttered. For example, it wasn't obvious that saved guides needed to be refreshed to take advantage of new resources. That's one extra burden that FL can eliminate.

And already, add/remove/reorder guide sections modifies the guide itself in Logos 8 -- a capability that has been around since Logos 4 with the Guide Template Editor, but the new functionality is much more intuitive.

Yes, I agree that it's more intuitive, and I do appreciate not having to maintain/edit a separate copy of a customized guide.

I'm very interested to hear your feedback on this proposal.

I'm definitely open to the changes that FL is planning to make, as you've all put a lot more thought into this.

For what it's worth, I mostly used saved guides as a historical "reminder" that I happened to previously study this or that passage/word for a specific Mobile Ed course. Stars indicated to me that a commentary contained interesting highlighted information about a passage.

In that sense, I think of stars as more related to specific insight, rather than a particular commentary being a favorite. I haven't used Favorites myself, and simply happen to prioritize more useful commentaries, to appear first.

I definitely like the direction that L8 has already taken in many areas (e.g., canvas, workflows, search templates, new notes) which make the user experience more intuitive and natural, and bible study more educational.

I'm grateful that FL does listen, and accommodate some of our requests, as plans and improvements are made for 8.x. Thanks again!

Gary Jarvis

Hello Adam,

It was quite disappointing to me to open up Logos 8 for the first time to see all of my saved guides and the notes attached to them gone. I was using those features every week for my sermon prep. So I would be opening up that same saved guide all week as I worked on my sermon, going back and forth between my study of that passage in the guide to the Sermon Editor. Then the saved guides were great to keep the history of all my study work, because it told me a number of things. 1. What passages I preached on and when. 2. I could easily find those saved guides as they were listed in Canonical order in case I was preaching on another occasion or at a different time with that text. I could pull up the saved guide and see all of my previous study work and refresh my memory as I prepared for the new sermon in that context. 3. If I was preaching in a series, I could pull up previously saved Guides to remind myself of a few things that tie in across the series. As you can see, These features I used every week.

My question is when I will get my notes back? I was in the middle of one Sermon prep this week, and those notes are gone.

Thank you,

Gary Jarvis

Adam Borries (Logos)

Gary, I'm sorry about this. It will be a while before we add notes back to guides (as new Notes tool notes, see above), but I'll follow up with you privately to see how we can help your immediate situation.

Dennis Phelps

Gary, thank you for posting this. I had several saved guides that I had customized for various exegetical and sermon prep needs, also. Regrettably, I guess they are now gone. It is also regrettable that Logos did not warn or prepare for such basic and significant changes if we chose to "update" to L8. Although several of the new tools are nice, I am not yet sure of the value of the improvements for those of us who worked so hard with L7 and developed customized templates, guides, etc. I have been using Logos since before it was Libronix. I have taught many Logos classes at the seminaries where I have served. I have strongly encouraged and even required many students to purchase the program. I am trying to keep an open mind at this point.

RyanB

Hey All,

I don't yet have L8 (still flipping couch cushions looking for extra money) so please forgive this basic question, but I just wanted to verify that when I ultimately do upgrade to L8, that I will NOT lose what L7 called "My Passage Guide." Specifically, that (heavily) edited guide template that I created with sections that I found valuable and useful. I understand that any passage guides saved to a particular scripture are gone, but I wanted to make sure that I still had access to my edited guide template.

If someone could just confirm this for me I'd be grateful.

Richard Wardman

Hey All,

I don't yet have L8 (still flipping couch cushions looking for extra money) so please forgive this basic question, but I just wanted to verify that when I ultimately do upgrade to L8, that I will NOT lose what L7 called "My Passage Guide." Specifically, that (heavily) edited guide template that I created with sections that I found valuable and useful. I understand that any passage guides saved to a particular scripture are gone, but I wanted to make sure that I still had access to my edited guide template.

If someone could just confirm this for me I'd be grateful.

Hi Ryan. It's still there! What used to be called "My Passage Guide" is now called "Passage Guide." It's your guide template as before, and is still fully editable.

RyanB

Hi Ryan. It's still there! What used to be called "My Passage Guide" is now called "Passage Guide." It's your guide template as before, and is still fully editable.

Great news. Thank you Richard. I appreciate it. I'm trusting that all of your template edits from L7 also transferred over to the L8 Passage Guide?

Andrew Batishko

Great news. Thank you Richard. I appreciate it. I'm trusting that all of your template edits from L7 also transferred over to the L8 Passage Guide?

All of your custom templates from L7 are available in L8 exactly as they were in L7. The only change with templates is that "My Passage Guide" is not listed separately, but is instead automatically used and edited in place of the default Passage Guide template.

john camping

Adam Borries thanks! One of your customer service team members guided me here to this thread. I was lil distraught when the my content feature went away. But after reading this I see how you have integrated other functional tools to do the same thing. It is actually much easier to see now and all I have to do is click on the post-it note that is next to the chapter and verse. It's so much better in my opinion as well and more options to write and edit and like you said search. Thanks.

I'm new to this all, so from a newbie standpoint using the Notes Tab you made and anchoring the text is by far easier for me. Looking to see more features great job everyone there at Faithlife.