Open a .jwlibrary backup archive to see the Annotations (the editable text fields in some of the publications), Bookmarks, Favorites, Highlights, Notes and Playlists (Category) that are stored within it. These will be organized in a tree view, which can be grouped (Grouping) by either title, type, language, and (depending on what you are currently viewing) you may also have the option to group by year, color or tag. Drag-and-drop to open is implemented.
The state of the application (size, position, language, and various selection choices) is preserved in a JWLManager.conf file created in the same directory as the app. You can delete that file to start with default settings.
Notes that are not associated with any publication (created directly in the Personal Study space), are listed as * OTHER * and with * NO LANGUAGE *. Notes that aren't tagged will be listed as * NO TAG *.
The status bar shows the name of the currently opened archive. The Count column shows the number of items for each branch of the tree.
Clicking on the column headers allows for sorting the tree; clicking the same header again reverses the sort.
The View menu has some additional options (also accessible directly via the key combination shortcut):
- Expand All (Ctrl+E) - expands the tree to make all levels visible
- Note: double-clicking on an entry will expand (or collapse) all its sub-levels
- Collapse All (Ctrl+C) - collapse all levels
- Select All (Ctrl+A) - a quick way to select all entries
- Unselect All (Ctrl+Z) - unselect everything
- Title View - change how publication titles are displayed
- Code - publication code
- Short - abbreviated title
- Full - complete title
If you modify an archive and intend to use the results to re-import into JW Library, make sure to save it (with a new name). KEEP A BACKUP of your original .jwlibrary archive in case you need to restore after messing up ;-)
Shows selected Notes and Annotations in a Data Viewer window, with a filter that searches within the title and body, and an option to save the results to a text file. You can delete and/or edit individual items. You have to confirm all edits within the Data Editor and again in the Data Viewer before they are written to the database (of course, you still have to save the archive as usual). You can go back via the buttons (or Escape key) without affecting the database.
In the case of Favorites, used for adding a Bible translation to your favorites, since there is no direct way of doing that in the JW Library app itself. And with Playlists you can add images ('bmp', 'gif', 'heic', 'jpg', 'png') to an existing playlist or create a new list.
Select the Category and the item(s) you wish to eliminate from the database. For example, you may want to remove highlighting you made in some older magazines, or bookmarks you never knew you had, or clear your favorites completely, etc.
Notes and Annotations from selected publications can be exported to an MS Excel (default) or a text file (use filetype dropdown to select) which you can edit (add, remove, modify) and later import into your archive (or share with someone else). Annotations are language-agnostic - they show up in different language versions of the same publication. The Links to wol.jw.org in the generated MS Excel file are for convenience only; they are not re-imported. The same goes for the Reference column, which is the Bible reference in BBCCCVVV format. Exporting of Highlights is also possible - not so much with a view of direct editing, but sharing/merging into another archive.
Items from differente Playlists can be exported to a .jwlplaylist archive containing one Playlist (with the name of the archive) which can be imported as a Playlist.
Playlists are imported from .jwlplaylist archives (containing a single list) and .jwlibrary archives (using the Import button only; drag-and-drop will open the archive instead of importing all the playlists it contains).
You can work with the exported MS Excel file (reusing the column headings) or use a special UTF-8 encoded text file with the Notes, Highlights or Annotations to import. You can use the file produced by exporting, or you can create your own. The Higlights file is a CSV text file with a {HIGHLIGHTS} header. The Annotations file must start with {ANNOTATIONS} on the first line. You can simply drag-and-drop the import text files into the app as long as they have the correct header line.
Editing or creating a Highlights import file is not recommended. Exported Highlights can be merged into another archive. Any conflicting/duplicate entries will be replaced and overlapping highlights will be combined and the color changed to the one being imported (this can affect the final number).
The {NOTES=} attribute in the first line is required to identify a Notes export/import file, and provides a convenient way to delete any notes that have titles starting with a special character (for example, {NOTES=»}). This is to avoid creating duplicate notes if the title has changed. When set, all notes with titles starting with this character will be deleted before notes from the file are imported. Otherwise, notes with the same title and at the same 'location' will be over-written, but those where the title was modified even slightly will create an almost duplicate note.
Attribute key and value pairs must be placed within {}. The keys correspond to the first-row column-headings in the MS Excel file. They can be in any order within the note-header. The header line starts and ends with ===. This header is required for each note, and must contain at least one attribute pair. The very next line after the header is the note title. A multi-line body follows, terminated by the header of the next note or the file-terminating header or ==={END}===.
- CREATED
- date note was created (yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS) - optional
- if not provided and note is being updated, its current value will be used; otherwise, modified date if available; if not, the date and time of import is used
- eg.
{CREATED=2018-12-10}
- MODIFIED
- date note was modified (yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS) - optional
- if not provided, the date and time of import is used
- eg.
{MODIFIED=2019-12-10T22:15:00}
- TAGS
- tags (separated by "|") - optional
- if not provided, no tag is added; if a note is replacing/updating another, its tags will be updated or removed
- eg.
{TAGS=Ministerio|Personal}
- COLOR
- note color (0 = grey; 1 = yellow; 2 = green; 3 = blue; 4 = red; 5 = orange; 6 = purple) - optional (will be 0 = grey if not provided)
- eg.
{COLOR=2}
- RANGE
- 0-based index of the tokens ("words") to highlight - optional
- if not provided, note will be attached to start of verse/paragraph (no highlighting)
- if no COLOR is provided (or
{COLOR=0}), token range will be ingnored - eg.
{RANGE=4-11}
- LANG
- language (for Bible and publications notes) - optional (will be 0 = English if not provided)
- eg.
{LANG=1}
- PUB
- publication symbol - required for notes attached to any publication or Bible
- if not provided, note will be considered "independent" and attributes listed below will be ignored
- eg.
{PUB=nwtsty}
- HEADING
- specifies the heading/chapter title where note is placed (or Bible book and chapter) - optional
- this is included mostly for convenience; it may be blank, and is regenerated correctly when the JW Library app displays the Notes
- eg.
{HEADING=Genesis 1}
- BK
- Bible book number (1-66) - required
- eg.
{BK=1}
- CH
- chapter number - required
- for books with just one chapter, use 1
- eg.
{CH=45}
- VS
- verse number - required (see exceptions below)
- eg.
{VS=6} - special cases:
{VS=0}- for Psalm headings- attribute omitted - for note at top of chapter
- attribute omitted and
{BLOCK=1}- for note attached to Bible book title (before verse 1)
- ISSUE
- issue (yyyymm00 or yyyymm01 or yyyymm15 ) - required for periodical publications
- eg.
{ISSUE=20110400}
- DOC
- document - required
- eg.
{DOC=202011126}
- BLOCK
- "paragraph" block
- eg.
{BLOCK=6} - special cases:
- attribute omitted - for note at top of document
- Independent notes are compared by title and content. If two notes are imported that are equal in those two fields, only one will be imported. This helps eliminating duplicates.
- Unless the corresponding colored highlights are also imported, the imported notes are placed at the beginning of the paragraph or verse that they are attached to.
{COLOR=}with value of 1 to 6 and{RANGE=}→ colored stickie with highlight{COLOR=}with value of 1 to 6 and NO{RANGE=}→ colored stickie (at start of paragraph/verse and no highlight){COLOR=0}(with/without{RANGE=}) → grey stickie (at start of paragraph/verse and no highlight)
If you need to share your complete archive (for diagnostic purposes, etc.) but have some personal or confidential information, you can use this option to obfuscate the text fields in your archive. The length of the text remains the same, leaving all numbers and punctuation in place, but alphabetic characters are over-written with meaningless expressions such as 'obscured', 'yada', 'bla', 'gibberish' or 'børk'. To confirm, view the notes in the Data Viewer. Only tags are not obscured. This is a dangerous, destructive, one-way procedure! Make sure you keep your 'official' backup!
This function cleans up and re-orders the records in the archive database. It is not strictly required, though it may streamline and speed it up slightly. The process itself may take up to a minute, depending on the number of records the database contains. It does not need to be run more than once in a while.
When a specific tag is selected in the JW Library app's "Personal Study" (Notes and Tags) section, the displayed notes can be arranged manually. This function restores all notes to their "natural" order (based on NoteId).