"Print Love" for the Sermon Builder

Llewellyn Martin

I’ve recently bought Logos with the Platinum package, and I’m enjoying it. I’m a fairly new pastor, so I’m still learning the sermon study and research, but Logos has been helpful for the little bit I’ve learned so far. Thank you for all your hard work in building it, as it has been well done and thought through to make it a very powerful Bible study tool! I tried using the Sermon Builder to prepare a sermon and really liked its numerous features, such as adding quotes, illustrations, sermon outline ideas, and much more. The ease of importing a verse while typing is handy, and the ease of importing notes into the sermon works slick, too. However, I quit using it and am just using the Notes option instead. Then, once I’m done, I import it into a sermon to utilize the sermon manager features. I quit using the sermon builder for three basic reasons and would love it if they could be resolved so I can use it. I know that the Sermon Builder is a newer feature, but it is 2 years since it was released, and we are now in another version of Logos, and the print options are still very limited.

• The export/print option is basically worthless. We do not use projectors, computers, or iPads in our services, and so I preach from print notes. When I try to print from the Sermon Builder, it flattens my outline hierarchy, which is strange since the notes print perfectly.
  
• Line spacing issues. I believe that the Sermon Builder was designed for electronic use, not paper use, and so the text formatting options are very limited. One is that the line spacing is very spread apart, which feels clunky to me on print and really bugs me. I wish there was an option to adjust the line spacing from tight to normal to expanded to very expanded, or 1, 1.5, 2, or 3 spaces.
  
• Text sizing options. The limited options to customize text sizes are frustrating as well. I understand why you didn’t use the normal font sizes. People use it on projectors/screens, which helps keep the font sizes in a normal range. However, it is too big for print, and I can’t adjust it enough. I wish there was another couple of sizes added below what you currently have so I could size it down easily to use on print. I like the option to pick headings and paragraph styles, which the notes option doesn’t have.
  

Again, thank you for the phenomenal software. You have done a fabulous job! I would love it if the Sermon Builder could be given some upgrades for us paper preachers. Thanks!

Frank Sauer

Voted - though I have never really used the Sermon Builder - the Print/Export function in general has room for improvement in different areas of use

Pastor Don Carpenter

When I used to use paper like you, I found that exporting to MS Word helped with some of those issues. Once i was gifted a tablet, I have been preaching from that and I have never looked back.

Llewellyn Martin

@Pastor Don Carpenter Yes, I know you can export to Word, but that just feels clunky and takes extra work that I didn't feel like doing. But thanks for the suggestion!