Why can't I make edits to my PDF files?

Why can't I make edits to my PDF files?

While OnSong is able to view and display PDF, PNG, JPEG, Microsoft Word, and other similar types of chord charts, OnSong is designed to work best with plain-text-based chord charts made in programs like TextEdit for Mac or Notepad for Windows. PDF chord charts are more like a photograph and actually contain no actual text that can be recognized or edited. Because of this, OnSong cannot format songs, detect keys, and perform other OnSong functions like Low Light Mode in PDF files. These files are unfortunately only able to be viewed "as-is".

OnSong does contain an "Extract Text" option that might be of some use. If you use the Extract Text feature in the Conversion Toolbar of the Song Editor, OnSong will attempt to scan your song and perform optical character recognition, which can often have mixed results- sometimes chords or lyrics might become misplaced or scrambled around. However, once the text is extracted and you are able to take some time to reformat and "clean up" the song, you will now be able to view the song as a text file and make edits like detecting/changing keys or capos, highlighting chords, resizing text, etc.

Conversely, if you'd like to create your songs using TextEdit or Notepad, you can follow the guidelines listed here to make sure that your song is in optimal OnSong format: http://onsongapp.com/docs/features/formats/onsong/
    • Related Articles

    • How can I make a black background with white text in OnSong?

      This is what is known as Low Light Mode. You can enable Low Light Mode to make white text appear on a black background. However, please keep in mind that this will only work with text-based files and not PDF, JPG, or other non-text-based files. To do ...
    • Why are some user interface elements hard to see in low light or dark mode?

      OnSong has had Low Light Mode for years to allow musicians to play on dimly lit stages. Apple has just recently released Dark Mode for iOS/iPadOS 13 that allows you to change your interface in a similar way. By default, OnSong will automatically ...
    • How do I extract text from an imported file?

      OnSong supports importing a variety of file formats, but works best with plain, text-based chord charts. However, if you've imported a word processing file such as Microsoft Word, Rich Text Formatting (RTF), or Adobe PDF, the file will display ...
    • Extract Text on SongSelect songs is not working properly.

      The issue with Song Select is that they only make their chord charts available in PDF format. The PDF files they create are more like pictures of a chart and don't contain any text.  This means that OnSong has to submit the file to an OCR server ...
    • I can not extract the text from a .pages file, what should I do?

      We are sorry you are having trouble!  Apple has changed the way they save the pages documents into a proprietary format that we can not access.  This change makes it impossible to convert the files inside OnSong.  You will have to use Pages to ...