Presentations, playlists and scripture in Present

In Present, everything you show lives in a presentation: a song's lyrics, a sermon's points, a scripture passage, the announcements. A playlist is the running order for a service. This article covers finding presentations, making new ones, building playlists, opening a plan in Present, adding scripture, and importing from ProPresenter.

Where to find it

Go to Present. The left rail holds Presentations (the Library row), Playlists and Loops. Click Library to see every presentation; click a playlist to see its items. The list appears in the lower half of the rail.

Find a song or presentation

1. Go to Present.
2. In the left rail, click Library. The list shows every presentation and every song in your church's song library, with its key in brackets.
3. Hover over a row to see a card with the first lines of the lyrics, the key and the CCLI number.
4. Click the row. Its slides open in the grid in the center. A song that has never been opened in Present comes in on that first click.

To search instead:

1. Click the magnifying glass beside Presentations ("Search the church library").
2. The Add from the church library window opens on Songs. Type in Search songs….
3. Click a song. It opens as a presentation. Songs already in Present are marked In Present; picking one again never makes a duplicate.

Create a new presentation

1. Go to Present.
2. Click + beside Presentations ("New presentation").
3. In New presentation, type a Name.
4. Under Theme, pick the theme slide it should be dressed with (shown as thumbnails). Leaving the church default keeps it following that default.
5. Check Aspect ratio. It starts on the church default.
6. If a playlist is open, the switch that adds it to that playlist is already on, so the new presentation lands there. Turn it off to keep it out of the playlist.
7. Turn on This is a song if it is a song. It is then also added to the church Songs library so plans can schedule it. If a song with that name already exists, Link to the existing song appears; leave it on to open that song instead of making a second copy.
8. Click Create (or Link).

Build a playlist for a service

1. Go to Present.
2. Click + beside Playlists ("New playlist"). A playlist named "New Playlist" appears and opens.
3. Right-click the playlist and choose Rename to name it.
4. Click Library, then drag presentations from the list onto the playlist's row in the rail. Each one is added to the end.
5. Click the playlist again to see its items. Drag items up and down to reorder them.
6. Click + beside the item count ("Add section header") to add a header such as "Worship" or "Message". Type its name and press Enter.
7. Click an item to open its slides in the grid. Clicking an item does not put anything on the screens; clicking a slide does.

Right-click a playlist item for Rename, Duplicate, Add action…, Add to loop and Delete. Right-click a header to pick its colour.

Open a plan in Present

1. Go to Plan > Services and open the plan.
2. On the Order tab, click Present in the toolbar. (It is greyed out while the plan has no items.)
3. Present opens (in a new browser tab on the web app) and shows "Building this service’s playlist…".
4. A playlist named after the service appears with the plan's songs, media and headers in order.

While Present is open, the playlist keeps up with changes to the plan. If you edit an item in Present, it shows edited and the plan stops updating that item. To throw away your edits and rebuild from the plan, click Sync from plan at the top of the playlist.

Switch between arrangements

1. Go to Present and open a song.
2. Above the slide grid, click an arrangement tab to show that order of slides.
3. Click + ("New arrangement") to make another. Double-click the active tab to rename it.
4. When a song has sections, the Roadmap strip under the title shows its order. Drag sections to reorder, or click one to jump there live.

Rename, delete or turn a presentation into a song

1. Go to Present and click Library.
2. Right-click the presentation. (A library song that has never been opened in Present has no menu yet; click it once first.)
3. Choose Rename, Make this a song (adds it to the church Songs library so plans can schedule it), or Delete.
4. Delete asks first. Click Delete to remove it or Keep to cancel.

Make this a song is greyed out while that presentation is on the screens; clear it first.

Add scripture from the Bible

1. Go to Present and click Bible in the toolbar.
2. Pick a Bible translation: KJV, ASV, WEB, YLT, DARBY or BBE. NIV, ESV, NLT and CSB are listed under "Requires license (coming later)" and cannot be picked yet.
3. Type a passage such as "John 3:16-20" in the Go to passage box and press Enter. Or click a book, then a Chapter, then a verse; Shift-click a second verse to end the range.
4. The slides preview in the middle. Set Verses/slide, Verse numbers, Reference (where the reference appears) and Translation, and pick a Theme.
5. Click Add to current to add the slides to the open presentation. Use the arrow beside it for Save as new presentation or Save to playlist.

To put verses straight on the screens, click Live mode and then click a preview slide.

Import from ProPresenter

1. Go to Present.
2. Click the import button beside Presentations ("Import from ProPresenter"), or drag files from your computer onto the Presentations area.
3. Pick ProPresenter 7 presentations (.pro, .proBundle), playlists (.proPlaylist) or a theme (the file named Theme inside its folder). Add the pictures and videos they use too, so backgrounds come across.
4. Import from ProPresenter lists each file with its slide count, the media it found, and anything it could not bring across.
5. Click Import.

A theme comes in as a new theme group; your default look does not change. Importing the same file twice adds a second copy.

Troubleshooting

The song list says "The church song library is empty."

Add songs in Plan > Songs first. They then appear in Present's Library.

The Present button on my plan is greyed out

The plan has no items yet. Add songs or media to its Order tab first.

A song I changed in the plan did not change in Present

The playlist item shows edited: someone edited it in Present, so the plan no longer updates it. Click Sync from plan to rebuild it from the plan (this discards the edits made in Present).

Add to current is greyed out in Bible

No presentation is open. Use the arrow beside Add to current and choose Save as new presentation.

A ProPresenter slide came in without its background

The picture or video was not added to the import. The import window lists it under "Not found". Import again with the media file included.

Good to know

• Everyone who has a presentation open edits the same one. There are no separate copies.
• Songs pulled from the library and songs a plan schedules are the same presentation, so a fix made once shows everywhere.