Logos' Notes Are Counter-Intuitive - QUOTES/Highlights - Please Reconsider...

Just hit this today trying to export my highlights.

Bradley says it's an "unimplemented feature" which I find disappointing, maddening, bewildering, frustrating and any other similar word one might choose only because it was an "implemented feature" in the prior version of Logos.

I'm slightly confused if this isn't implemented now because of a technical hurdle, or because of an internal discussion of whether we should even be allowed to export full highlights.

If it's technical, what changed between Logos 5 and 6 that allows us to export content some content as John mentioned, but not full highlights?

Unfortunately, with L5 replaced by L6, I can't go back and give a step-by-step of what I had done or how the options were labeled.

In L5, I read about 10 Logos books on a particular topic. As I read through the books, my highlighted text was put into a Note that I created to be the hub for all these highlights from the different books. When I was done, I exported what was probably two hundred highlights (in full) to a Word doc and then transferred over to Evernote to arrange as a starting point and reminders for lessons I was teaching.

At the time, I couldn't figure out how to export it on my own, but it was a question raised at Camp Logos and we were told how to do it. Otherwise, there's no way I could have moved hundreds of highlights from Logos to Evernote without manually typing all of them.

For Bible study software like this, if Logos allows the ability to put highlights into a Note, they can't be shocked by the idea that people would want to export and use those highlights, not just use them to click to where those highlights were created.

You can't say it's a protection mechanism to prevent someone from highlighting a whole book and then copying it to another place. Because, to a small degree, that's what I was doing as I saw your post. I'm having to open the book I just read in Logos, move to each highlight, then copy/paste it out of the Logos book and paste it into Evernote. I get the same result as I had in L5, just takes more time and is less efficient.

If exporting full highlights was ever considered a "bug" prior to now, that's rather sad in my opinion. I'm not clear what the rationale behind preventing full export of highlights would be.

But if that's the way they look at it, it's back to Amazon when a book is available there. While I know some books there seem to have an upper limit of the amount of highlights you can make, I've yet to hit it with Amazon. For me, at least, it makes Logos less of a complete go-to source and one I would not invest more money in unless there's a resource that's only available through Logos.

Based on what you're saying about a "bug" in allowing you to do it previously, and what Dylan is saying about fixing a bug so you can export, I'm not clear now whether this is something that will be implemented or not in the near future. If not, as I mentioned, I'd sure be curious as to why.

I was putting together my highlights through the first half of 2014. So whatever was allowing me to grab full highlights was in effect then. To be honest, I read so much through different platforms, I couldn't tell you with 100% certainty which platform I used to read each book. My guess is most of it was mobile. I did not paste anything into a subject line. I'm way too lazy to want to do something like that, especially hundreds of times.

As far as Kindle, I wasn't referring to a copy/paste, just the highlighting limits within books bought through Amazon. Certain publishers did set a limit on the number of highlights you could create in books you bought through Amazon. I once got a warning for one book that I was getting close, but I never reached it. In fact, I made quite a lot of highlights after that point and still never hit it. This was a real problem for some people on the Amazon forums at one point because it was affecting them.

I couldn't say for sure if those limits still exist today because I only hit it once about a year or two ago, but I know it did exist for some books in the past which caused an uproar.

If it is just Bible verses you can do this.

1. Open your Highlighter note file and select the Quotes view.

2. Click on the book or ribbon (not sure which it is) icon on the top left to open the menu you use to print/export

3. Click on "Save as Passage List."

4. In the new window which opens click on the book or ribbon icon again in the top left of the window and click on the print/export option.

I would like to join in the request to allow exports of highlighted text.  While studying, the flexibility provides great value.  I agree with John and others that this should be designed into the system...

In Logos 6 I can click on the Clippings icon, select Print/Export and send all of the clippings in the clippings file (from various books and commentaries) to an RTF file. The option to export to a new Microsoft Word doc fails with an error about COUNT, but at least I can get the full text of all these clippings into Word in almost one step. 

Anne H said:

MJ. Smith said:

Okay, guys & gals ... who's game to try this

1. Open the resource you highlighted
2. Do an inline search for the highlighting
3. Adjust the unit size (verse, paragraph, pericope) to you best fit
4. Under the resource menu select Print/Export

This ought to come quite close to what you want.

Ok.  I will try it as soon as I restart. Logos just froze on me.  Thank You.! 

This did work better than using clippings for multiple highlights!  It did not retain the highlights though if I simply exported the material to a Word file, even using RTF. Ultimately I printed out the pages and got the full text of the page including the wanted highlights. Perhaps I am too much of a novice with the software, though, and someone else will have the skills to make it print highlights only.  

Thank you MJ for your help! [:)] 

To anybody still watching this thread, I have requested a fix for the issue here:

https://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/7084142-amend-fix-the-highlighting-functionality-which-c

I'd appreciate any spare votes that you might have so that it can be brought to the attention of the development team.

I've had an e-mail thread with Logos on this. Originally, a couple of months ago, they said it would be fixed in 6.5. It wasn't. When I wrote back I got this:

"6.5 was where exporting quotes view was scheduled, but circumstances interfered and that team missed the cut-off date. Looking at the code repository, I can see that coding on the feature is now finished and checked in, and is in testing now for release with 6.6."

We'll see.

How do you do an inline search for highlighting?

Doc B said:

Zak Metz said:

How do you do an inline search for highlighting?

Open the inline search tool (A). Click on the search category (B), and select the highlight style(s) you want to search for (C). Put a wildcard in the search box (*).

This doesn't work for me.  After I hit enter (or click on the right-pointing arrow), the search just cycles and cycles and cycles--never brings up any search results.  Interestingly however, the notes document that all my highlights are going into (in this case a document titled "The Epistle to the Romans", using the new Logos document title default) is not included as a search location option, although some of the old documents that I created custom highlights for (e.g. Daniel, Romans) are included.

I'm getting the same result as Rick...spinning spinning spinning. I have "Basic" search, then "Search grace for" and "*" in the search box...

Oh my gosh, it actually did finish just now. Rick, it may take a few minutes!

John, did you ever find a good solution to this.  I am attempting to highlight a non-biblical book purchased from Vyrso.  I have highlighted my passages, but I am unable to get a single view of my highlights so that I can print them for studying.  Have you found a way around this?

alabama24 said:

Whyndell Grizzard said:

Man don't even get me started on the notes and highlighting problems- the two should never have been intertwined- without a way to separate them for user preference.

Actually Wendell, this is exactly why you DO want highlights and notes "intertwined." If highlights were merely highlights, it wouldn't be possible to have a quotes view. If you wanted to "look at all of your highlights," you would do what has always been done... flip through the book.

yes but now you cannot have highlights as purely highlighting- i am having to create pallets for every book I’m studying to avoid issues- but there is so much clutter in the documents section and the notes drop down- so as far as MY opinion- they threw the baby out with the bath water.

Graham Criddle said:

Whyndell Grizzard said:

i am having to create pallets for every book I’m studying to avoid issues

Why are you creating a palette for every book?

I would have thought you could have a single palette - set to "resource-specific" - which would result in a separate Notes document for each resource making use of the styles in a single palette.

Does this not work for you? Am I missing your point?

My normal practice after I finish a book is to clear the highlighting (except Bibles- which I wish I could make a simple popup in them like I do with my PDF's)- much easier if a resource has a single pallet- my major complain with the notes hook up is all the clutter in notes file, and in the documents drop down- every hilite is listed there- just seems nutty to me

We obviously use these tools differently- highlighting is just hilite to me- DO NOT USE IT IN NOTES.

Notes are just notes- things i keep track of- and isn't that what the little note marker is for, to show where your notes are referencing.

VF I have no idea what you mean by using it to hilite- it does not have that function- I looked at it- yeah if you want to mark a certain word or phrase- yes- but not if your just reading through and want to mark something.

Even with the separate pallets and note file names- there is still cross over- to put it plainly notes and hilites are useless to me in there present form.

So all my notes now are off line in a different program- so I only have strictly hilitepallets in L6.

Believe me nothing can be done to fix this other than give the option to separate the functions- until then- I have no choice but to use outside programs. It has taken forever to delete the unnecessary clutter from notes- and transfer make information to BibleWorks.

This may be an ill thought out solution ... but it should be easy to implement ... can we have a visual filter at the top of a notes document (similar to resources) that simply hides any notes that do not have markers in the originating resource (empty note indicators) or any that do not have any text in the comment section?

Sorry ... my point is the cumbersome nature too the notes documents themselves. I want to see highlights in the original resources (of course) but then I find that the notes files are clogged with unending entries that relate to the highlights but have no other function (outside the quotes view). I would like to see those 'redundant' entries hidden to that their existence is only effectively within the highlighted resources and not within the note file.

A visual filter would still allow me to see them should I decide to add a note at a later point ... I sometimes like to remind myself of why I highlighted something ... it is not always obvious later on!) ... but the key is that I have control over when, if ever, I see the items within the note file.

Graham-

each Hilite pallet I have created for my resources appears as a note file under documents- but prior to doing this those individual hilites also showed up under visual filters- every SINGLE- hilite INDIVIDUALLY I did appeared there- that is a whole lot of clutter considering I have literally- conservatively speajking at one piont 10,000 hilites done in Logos- but not any more have deleted 99% of them.