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Frequently asked questions

How can I produce undated services, or services that can be used for more than a single day, e.g. a seasonal service sheet?

Background

Visual Liturgy is particularly suited to producing services for specific dates, and it makes this process easy by automatically importing lectionary resources for the specific date that you select. However, on some occasions you may wish to produce undated material, or a service that can be used throughout a season. To do this, proceed as follows:

To open an undated service:

1. Either Create a New Service, selecting a service template from the Welcome screen, or open the same dialogue by choosing File and then New...
2. Select the service template that you require from the list, and click on Go.
3. In the subsequent dialogue , untick the box for This is a service for a particular event.
4. Click OK and an undated service will open, with items such as readings, that would normally be automatically filled in according to the lectionary, left blank.

To add some seasonal resources to an undated service:

For example, imagine you are working on a "Holy Communion Order One" service and you want to customize it for use from Epiphany to the Eve of the Presentation. You want to use the appropriate "Introduction to the Peace". To do this, follow these steps:

1. In the service list (the left hand panel in Design view of the service) right-click on the item for which you want to include a seasonal text. In this example, it's called "Introductory sentence" in the Peace section of the service.
2. Select Browse... from the pop-up menu.
3. You will see a list of suggested alternative texts for the item. In this instance, each one includes details of the season for which it is intended. Highlight the one for "Epiphany to Eve of the Presentation".
4. Click on OK. It will now appear in the service.

Further ways to search for alternatives with which to customize your undated service:

For some items, e.g. hymns, Choose a text may not present an automatically selected list, or you may wish to use a different text that has not been suggested. To find other alternatives, you can try searching for an appropriate Church year theme.

To find seasonal liturgical texts, with your main undated service open onscreen, use New service to open up a seasonal resource template over the top, for example one of the seasonal provisions templates from the "Additional Resources from the President's edition" folder. Then click on Tile vertically under the Window menu. This will make both services display side-by-side onscreen. You can then drag-and-drop seasonal resources from the seasonal template into the undated template. If you prefer, you can tile them one on top of the other, by going to Window - Tile horizontally on the menu instead.

To include alternatives for a single item within the same service sheet:

If you wish to include more than one option for a particular item within your service sheet, e.g. because you vary your use of certain texts within an otherwise mostly fixed local order of service that you want to print off for local use, then do the following:

1. In the service list, find the item for which you want to provide alternatives, e.g. the "Greeting".
2. Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard.
3. While still holding down the Shift key, use the mouse to drag-and-drop from the item you want to duplicate, to just below it. When you release the mouse button, you should find that the item has been copied. You can then change the text for the second item to your desired alternative by using Choose a text.

You should now have two alternatives for the Greeting listed one after the other (it is not possible to place items side-by-side within Visual Liturgy; if you want to do this you will have to do it from within your word-processor or DTP program). To insert a rubric explaining the fact that only one of them should be used in any particular service, and the reasons governing when to use each one, use the following set of steps.

To add your own local texts to a service (and the database):

Note: If you want to insert a text straight into the database for use in the future, without putting it into a service at this time, follow only steps 4 - 9 below.

1. In the service list, right-click on the item below the point at which you wish the new text to appear.
2. Choose Edit or insert new item... from the pop-up menu.
3. A dialogue box will appear that takes you through the process of either inserting a new text or editing a existing one. Once complete, you should find your new material added to the database.
4. If you want to make detailed changes to the new text, for example if you want to add any styling to the text, right click on the item and choose View text details... from the pop-up menu.

You can also use this method to add new hymn texts, full-text Bible readings, local prayers, and so on. Visual Liturgy will remember that any texts created with this method were inserted by you, rather than the CD-ROM, so it will not overwrite them in future should you need to reinstall or upgrade the software.