Word file extraction.

Word file extraction.

OnSong can import and view Word files directly.

In this video tutorial we show you how to use Word to create a text-based file that you can import into onSong.  This lets you perform any additional editing inside of Word:

For details on the OnSong text-based file format, please visit:

You can extract text from the Word document right inside of OnSong. You would do that by viewing the document in OnSong and then tapping on the pencil icon to open the Song Editor:

At the bottom of the screen you'll find the conversion toolbar:

Tap on the "Extract Text" button.  This will pull the text from the Word document.  However, you'll need to finesse the text to align chords.  I'll explain why in a second, but if your chords are too spaced out, you can sometimes make this faster by using the "Fix Alignment Spaces" tool in Text Tools by tapping on the "wrench" icon: https://onsongapp.com/docs/interface/menubar/song-editor/menubar/text-tools/

Then tap on Fix Alignment Spaces at the bottom.

The issue with converting word processing documents to a text-based file format stems from "ariable-width fonts and tab characters.

Variable Width Fonts:
When you type a chord chart in Word, you typically do it with a font like Times New Roman or Helvetica/Arial.  These are called variable-width fonts in that the width of each character varies with the character.  For instance, an M character is much wider than a space character.  When you write chord charts in a word processor, you tend to use spaces to position the chords where you want.  Because a space character is so much narrower than other characters, it takes about 60% more spaces than characters underneath.  If you change the font in the word process to a fixed-width font like Courier, you can usually see this discrepancy and make changes.  The Fix Alignment Spaces tool tries to do most of that work for you.

Tab Characters:
Word processors have the notion of tab stops. Tab stop are set to specific measurements on a page and when the program encounters a tab, it aligns the text to an absolute point in horizontal space.  The issue is that text-based chord charts do not have the notion of tab stops.  Tabs are often converted into a series of spaces.  Newer versions of OnSong will take tabs and align the text after them to regular intervals. The default width of tabs in OnSong is eight spaces.  This means that OnSong attempts to align characters after the tab to a grid of 8 characters on the screen.  This is likely different from what you will see in word processing apps.

I hope that helps explain why word processing files can cause issues and require editing once converted.