Adding Sermons and Illustrations to Logos

With the free Personal Book Builder tool in Logos 5 (also applies to 4.6+), we can bring our own Sermons Notes or Outlines and Illustrations into our Logos library as a functional Logos resource. This means they will automatically integrate with our Bibles and other resources, as well as appear in searches where appropriate - just like regular Logos books.

This feature was previously called "Sermon File Addin" for Logos 3 (Libronix DLS). While those documents can not be directly imported, the original source files can be updated (save as DOCX) with these instructions and imported to Logos 5 (and 4.6+).

Getting Started

We need to create a Personal Book to put our Sermons or Illustrations into. Select Personal Books from the Tools menu. Click "Add book" to start a new Sermon or Illustration book or click "Edit" to modify a previous book in the list.

Fill in Library Information

When your book appears in your library, it needs to contain certain information in order to be categorized properly. There are several fields you can edit on any given book, including title, author and description. Fill them in as you feel appropriate for your Sermons or Illustrations ("Type" can be left as "Monograph").

Example:

Adding Sermons

The Personal Books tool is not a text editor. We will need to create/edit source documents in Microsoft Word, or another editor that supports DOCX format, then add them to the book. This can be done in a single document, or with individual documents for each Sermon/Illustration, as a matter of personal preferrence.

Instructions (based on MS Word 2010)
1. Open Word to a New Document.
2. Enter the title for your sermon or illustration.
3. Select the title and click "Heading 1" from the styles menu.
4. Copy and Paste the following table on the next line:

The specific fields on the right side of the table should be edited as appropriate. These fields will be used to tag a sermon to specific passages, topics and tags when searched. This is also where we will record when it was last preached, if that is important. We can add multiple passages, topics, tags and dates to any field by separating them with a semicolon (;).

Additional Sermons or Illustrations

To add another sermon or illustration to the current document, enter a another title as "Heading 1" followed immediately by another table. Repeat as necessary. This can also be accomplished by creating a new DOCX document for each entry, and then adding them independantly while compiling the book.

Note: The Sermon File Type can be "Sermon" or "Illustration", but these types can not co-mingle in a single book or document. Keep Sermons and Illustrations separate.

Compiling the Book

With the DOCX files properly marked up, they are ready to add to the book and compile a new resource.

1. Click the "Add file..." button.
2. Select the desired DOCX file.
3. Repeat with additional DOCX files if necessary.
   Once added, a DOCX file can be arranged in the list by click-and-drag.
4. Click the "Build book" button when finished.

The book will open in a new panel or tab. It will also appear in the Library and automatically begin indexing itself for searching like other Logos resources.