The tip for this week is all about how to set an item as a default. What this means is that if you use particular versions of texts all the time, you can tell Visual Liturgy to automatically use those versions so that you don’t have to keep changing them each time you start a new service.
To set an item as a default you need to edit the item properties. Click on the item you wish to edit to highlight it. A grey button with three dots on will appear, this is the ‘context menu’. Click on the button, then scroll down to item properties.
A window will open that looks like the one below. With the ‘General’ folder selected on the left hand side you will be able to see various bits of information about that particular item. For example the item name in the Service list, the person responsible (if appropriate).
It also tells you both what the current and default texts are for that service slot. In the example below, both the current text and the default text is the traditional version of the Lord’s Prayer. However, say I want my preferred choice of the Lord’s Prayer to actually be the contemporary version by default. To change this, click on the ‘Change’ button next to the default text to bring up the Browser.
Find your preferred text as usual and click ‘select item’ to update the default text. To change the current text to match the default text, simply click on the button ‘Make default text the current text’.
Once this is all done, the only thing that remains to do is to save the template so that future services based on this template carry this same change. Click File in the menu bar and then Save. Choose to save as a template for future use.
Now every time you create a new service using this template in Visual Liturgy, the Lord’s Prayer will be in the contemporary form.