Passage List or Notebook Creation from Highlighter Style

This is something that I have been able to do in past versions of Logos, but now in Logos 8 am unable to do. Basically, it is this. In the past, I could select a highlighter style and create a notes list or a passage list that included all of the instances of that highlighter style across all of my resources. Now, when I look at my highlighters, it only allows me to add a corresponding notebook to a pallet of styles (not individual styles) and even then, will only add new highlights from now on. So all of the highlights that I have created over the past 8+ years of using Logos have no easy way of correlating.

I called tech support many times and used their chat feature as well and have basically been told that this is no longer possible and to make a suggestion here in the forums for the developers to add this feature back. I was also told that I am unable to downgrade back to Logos 6 or Logos 7 in order to get this feature back. So, now I am stuck without access to all of my highlights.

For example, when I was going through seminary, I used over 50 different highlighter styles while in class and studying Scripture to highlight verses that talked toward various theologies like Bibliology, Eschatology, Ecclesiology, and Soteriology. While studying for my oral boards, I could select the highlighter style for Soteriology and create a notes document with every Bible reference and Systematic Theology quotation that I had highlighted over my course work and from there have a study help for my boards. For a more immediate need, I am writing a study book for my small group right now on the Redemption promise found in Scripture and I have no access to all of the verses that I have highlighted over the years on Soteriology to pull from.

I have gotten to the rambling stage, so I do apologize and thank you for reading. But, please please please if you are a developer for Logos, please add this feature back as soon as possible! Allow a user to select a highlighter style (not just the pallet) and then create a passage list or notebook that includes all instances of that highlighter style throughout their Logos library. Please! Years of research and countless hours are inaccessible to me now. This is one of the primary ways that I use Logos and it feels like someone stole one of my most valuable study aids. I am not meaning to be dramatic, but just to emphasize my frustration at the situation. Thank you for your time in reading this. I hope that it gets fixed soon.

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Christopher Warrington

Ok, I may have found a workaround. While looking at other issues that people have brought up, someone posted a solution to another question here: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/182214.aspx about doing a Bible search, selecting your highlighters and then searching for a term within the highlighters. This got me thinking about whether or not I could do this, but instead of a term to search for the "ALL" type character of an asterisk (*). It took my computer (2017 MacBook Pro, 2.8 GHz processor with 16GB Ram and solid-state drive) 330.41 seconds to search, but it found 60 verses for one of my highlighter styles, and then took another 2-3 minutes (no timer is shown) to convert that search to a passage list. For those needing to do this, here is a step by step guide.

1) Open up a standard search window by clicking the magnifying glass up near the top left of your screen.

2) Select "Bible" from the type of search. Not Basic, Media, etc.

3) Then the first option, you will have the options dropdown and you will select the highlighter style that you want to use.

4) Then select "All Passages"

5) Then select the Bible version

6) Now type in the asterisk (*) in the search field and click enter or the go button and then wait... for what seems forever... Though in my case only 5 1/2 minutes.

7) After the verses pop up, In the top right of the search box, you will see three verticle dots. Click that and then click on "Save as Passage List"

8) Now it will take more time, but eventually, it will create the passage list and you can retitle it to something other than "* in ESV" or whatever version Bible you searched.

With the new "Notebooks" in Logos 8, it would be nice if I could have exported that to a Notebook that I could then connect to the Pallet, but. At least now I have access to all of my highlights. With nearly 100 different highlighter styles, this will take roughly 9.167 hours to convert all of my highlights to passage lists... but I have access to them! That is good.

Good luck to you. Now I am off to try doing a "Basic" search in all of my resources for a highlighter style with the asterisk. Let's see how long that will take.

Andrew Loney

have basically been told that this is no longer possible

I'm very discouraged to hear this. I admittedly had not attempted to search or filter based on my highlights for awhile now, but just tried after reading this post. The only place that provides the apparent ability is Basic Search; where I can search for individual highlights, but I had to wait over 367 seconds (over 6 minutes) for 1,832 results in 35 articles of only one book! Barely usable to search a single resource and entirely useless to search your entire library. [:@]

It is disheartening that our valuable notations and our ability to recall them are held hostage to features that disappear from Logos after we have invested countless hours creating them. I am not inclined to invest any further in storing my notations in a system that I can't count on to provide reasonable access to those notations for as long as I use wish to use the system. This is a shame as it's one of the more useful capabilities of electronic books.

[:(][:'(]

Andrew Loney

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1062642#Comment_1062642

Ok, I may have found a workaround.

Lol (sadly), Christopher posted his similar experience while I was typing my post.

Graham Criddle

Hi Christopher

In Logos 8 - as in previous versions - you can search for all instances of a Highligter style and then create a Passage List from the results.

Does this give you what you want?

Graham

Andrew Loney

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1062645#Comment_1062645

Thank you Graham for the syntax to search highlights[:)]. This is FAR faster than the search method I tried above. This search syntax for the same highlighting I searched with my method took only .05 seconds compared to the over 6 minutes for the method I tried[:$].

Again Thank you. This is usable search.

A very helpful feature would be ability to filter Notes based on specific highlights (not just that the note has highlights).

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1062646#Comment_1062646

A very helpful feature would be ability to filter Notes based on specific highlights (not just that the note has highlights).

You are not alone on this one - https://community.logos.com/forums/t/174390.aspx

Christopher Warrington

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1062645#Comment_1062645

Does this give you what you want?

Graham, you are amazing. I have no idea why those that tried to help me in technical support did not mention the idea of using the search feature, nor the highlight syntax. For those that are following or are reading this later, there is a page on the Logos Wiki that talks on the Highlighting search syntax: https://wiki.logos.com/search_help#Highlighting

For me, I had to play around with it until I figured out the exact way (and capitalization matters) to search. For instance, I have my Oral Board Prep highlighter pallet.

But, you can't type the name as you see it in the pallets (All caps), you have to type the syntax exactly how you typed it initially. So, I had to right-click and select "Rename" to get this:

Notice that you have to add a slash and an asterisk when searching a pallet.

{Highlight Highlighters - Oral Board Prep/*}

Just searching for my "Angelology" style, I could just do:

{Highlight Angelology}

From there, it could pull in all of my highlights from that pallet. I tested this with my search before that took over 5 minutes, and it took 0.14 seconds using this syntax. Night and day. Doing it with my entire Oral Board Prep pallet, it pulled 591 verses in 0.19 seconds and 667 results in 200 articles in 7 resources in my entire library in 0.66 seconds. Again, night and day.

So, thank you Graham for this information. I feel much better now, though am still frustrated that they took away the easier steps found in a previous Logos version.

Next question, how can I take that search result and not add it to a passage list, but to the notebook that I have now created for the highlighter pallet so that it is automatically updated with each new highlight?