Guide

Bringing your existing sheet music archive: the move, step by step

Excel list, folder full of PDFs, ZIP or member list: how the import assistant takes over your existing archive, with a preview, a full log and a way back.

Hardly any band starts from zero. Somewhere there is an Excel list the librarian has kept for years, a folder on the club PC with hundreds of PDFs, a network drive full of scans or an export from the previous sheet music app. That is exactly the collection Notenarchiv’s import assistant takes over – without you renaming a single file or creating a single piece by hand.

The assistant recognises your folder structure by itself: which level is a music book, which is a piece and which is a part. It matches the parts to your instruments, finds duplicates in your library and shows you every single row before it starts. Nothing in your archive changes until you click Start import.

This guide walks through the move in the order that has proven itself in practice.

What the assistant takes over

For music the assistant accepts PDF and forScore files (.4sc) – for those, title and composer come straight from forScore. Lists are read as .xlsx or .csv. If your list is still an old .xls, an .ods or a Numbers file, save it once as .xlsx first.

Before you start

Who can run the move? Score list and score folder are for admins and librarians. The member list can be imported by whoever maintains members in your organisation; only an admin can assign roles.

Where is the assistant? It runs in the browser on a computer at app.notenarchiv.com – deliberately not in the app, because hundreds of files belong on a computer with a stable connection. There are three ways in:

• on the Upload page via the link Bring your existing archive,
• on the start page via the card Moving in with an existing archive? – it appears as long as your archive is still nearly empty,
• under Administration → Members via Import members.

The page is called Move in: bring your existing archive and offers three cards: Score list, Score folder and Member list, each with Start.

Set up your instruments and books before you import music. The assistant compares parts and book codes with what already exists in your organisation. If you have created “Trumpet 1”, “Clarinet 2 in Bb” and the “Main book” with the code MB once beforehand, almost everything is matched automatically. Alternatively, you can let the import create the books (see below).

The recommended order

1. Score list – it brings titles, composers, books and numbers into the system.
2. Score folder – the PDFs find the pieces from step 1 and are merged into them instead of being created twice.
3. Member list – last, once the music is in place. Invitations only go out when you explicitly trigger them.

You can also use each path on its own. If you have no list, start straight with the score folder; if you only want to record your inventory for now, import just the list.

Every import runs through fixed steps shown at the top of the page: Source → Columns or Structure → Instruments → Review → Result. Analysis and execution run in the background, so you can leave the page and carry on later; Previous imports lists every run with its status. You can cancel at any step.

Step by step: importing the score list from Excel

1. Choose the file. Click Start on the Score list card and select your Excel or CSV file. If you have no list yet or want to rebuild it, Download template gives you a prepared sheet with the columns No. | Title | Composer | Arranger | Publisher | Book | Category | Notes.

2. Map the columns. The assistant finds the header row by itself and recognises common column names – “Piece” or “Work” as the title, “Arrangement” as the arranger, “Folder” as the book, “Duration”, “Notes” and many more, in German, Italian and French too. For each column you see sample values from your file. Check the mapping, pick another sheet or header row if needed. Columns you do not need are set to “Do not import”. Only the title is required.

3. Set books and numbers. The assistant understands numbers such as 12, 12a, SO203a or MB 12. If the book has its own column, it may hold the name or the code. If your list contains plain numbers only, choose a Book for rows without a book. Books that do not exist yet can be created by the import.

4. Analyse and review the list. Every row lands in a category:

   • New – the piece does not exist yet.
   • Merge – the piece already exists, even under a different spelling. “Böhmischer Traum (Polka)” finds “Böhmischer Traum”, “Gruesse” finds “Grüße”.
   • Conflict – the book number already belongs to another piece.
   • Error – for example a row without a title.

   Work through them with the filters All / New / Merge / Conflict / Error / Skip and the search. For each row you choose New, Merge or Skip; Skip all conflicts settles the conflicts in one go. Similar titles are only shown as a hint – nothing is merged on a hunch.

5. Start the import. The button shows how many entries will be imported. You can only start once no conflict is left open.

6. Result. You see how many pieces were created, merged and skipped, and you download the log as CSV or Excel.

Merging never overwrites anything. If a piece in your archive already has a composer, it stays. The import only fills empty fields, appends notes and adds missing book numbers.

You have 14 days to go back. If the result is not right, Undo reverses the list import: pieces created by it go to the trash, added book numbers disappear. Pieces that have since received music or been edited stay.

Step by step: importing the score folder

1. Choose the folder. Click Start on the Score folder card and open your archive folder via Choose folder – or simply drag it from Explorer or Finder onto the area. If your archive is a ZIP (a cloud download or a copy from the club PC, say), switch to the ZIP archive tab. Before anything starts, the assistant shows how many files it found and their total size, and checks whether your plan’s storage is sufficient.
2. Upload. Start upload sends the files, three at a time. The assistant retries by itself after short network drops, and you can pause at any time. Every uploaded file is immediately safe under Unassigned. If the upload is interrupted because the laptop was closed, choose the same folder again – files already uploaded are skipped. A ZIP resumes where it stopped. System files such as Thumbs.db, .DS_Store or __MACOSX are ignored.
3. Check the structure. This is the real trick: the assistant detects automatically how your archive is organised (more in the next section). For each folder level you see the detected role – Book, Piece, Instrument or Ignore – plus the role of the file name. A preview shows how the first files are read. If something is off, change the role of a level; Detect automatically resets everything. You can also have missing books created, set a Book for files without a book or an Instrument for all files – handy if, for example, you are only importing the Trumpet 1 folder.
4. Match instruments. Part names that do not clearly correspond to one of your instruments – “Trp 3” or “Alphorn”, say – are decided once per text, not once per file. You choose an existing instrument (the assistant suggests up to three similar ones), Create new or No instrument. New instruments are never created without asking.
5. Review. As with the score list: every file appears as New, Merge, Conflict, Error or Skip, with the match in your library next to it. You decide row by row or skip all conflicts at once.
6. Start import and result. The assistant creates pieces, attaches parts to existing pieces and sorts them into books. The result shows the numbers, the log for download and – if needed – how many files without a recognised piece are still waiting under Unassigned, with a link there.

Afterwards Notenarchiv prepares the new music in the background for download and the app. With a large archive this takes a while; you can keep working as usual in the meantime.

How the assistant recognises your folder structure

Every band sorts differently. The assistant therefore looks at all folder and file names and decides what each level means. Typical layouts it understands without any help:

A few details that help with preparation:

• It does not matter how deep you start. Whether you pick the archive folder itself or the one above makes no difference – the assistant counts levels upwards from the file name.
• Leading numbers are recognised, separated by a space, underscore, full stop or hyphen: 012 Old Comrades, 012_Old_Comrades. Letter suffixes such as 203a work too.
• A part at the end of the file name is recognised when it stands as the last word and matches the name, abbreviation or an alias of one of your instruments – with a number too, such as Tpt1 or Fl.2.
• Book codes in the file name (SO203, MB012) are matched against your existing books. So create the books with their codes first – or import the score list first.
• If the structure is ambiguous, the assistant says so explicitly and asks you to check the levels. It does not quietly guess.

How parts are matched to instruments

Over the decades, all sorts of things end up on old parts and in grown file names. The assistant is built for that:

• Word order does not matter: “Bb Trumpet 3” is the same as “Trumpet 3 in Bb”.
• Keys in many spellings: Bb, B♭, “B flat” and Sib all become B♭; Eb and Mib become E♭; likewise A♭, D♭ and G♭, and solfège (Fa, Sol, Ut/Do) becomes F, G and C.
• Roman numerals (I to IV) and ordinals (1st, 2nd) are understood.
• The part number has to match: Trumpet 2 is never assigned to Trumpet 1.
• Multilingual: besides the name, the abbreviation and your aliases, the assistant knows the German, Italian and French names of the instruments – “Trompete”, “Tromba” and “Trompette” all end up at the trumpet.

Whatever is left over you decide in the Instruments step – once per name, not per file. With 400 files labelled “Trp 3”, that is a single click.

Duplicates stay out

Grown archives in particular hold many things twice: the same file in two folders, the same piece under a slightly different name. The assistant catches this in two places:

• Identical files are recognised by their content, not their name. If the same PDF is already assigned to a piece in your organisation, it shows up as Already in “…” and is skipped.
• The same pieces are found even under a different spelling, with or without umlauts, accents and bracketed additions. Instead of a second piece, it proposes Merge.

So you can import a folder a second time – after a section has handed in its missing parts, for instance – without anything being doubled.

Importing the member list

An email address column is required. On top come first and last name (or a full name), instruments and groups; a template with First name | Last name | Email | Instrument | Group is available for download. Anyone who is already a member is skipped; anyone who already has a Notenarchiv account is simply linked. Unknown instruments or groups are decided once per name, just like in the score folder.

Not a single email goes out during the import. Only in the result do you send the welcome emails with Send invitations now – at the moment you choose, and each person receives it at most once. The uploaded list is deleted after the import.

After the move: the finishing touches

Hardly any archive goes through one hundred per cent automatically. For the rest you have the familiar tools:

• Unassigned: files without a recognised piece wait here. Notenarchiv reads the file names and makes suggestions you accept with one click. In the Premium plan, AI recognition can also read the score header and suggest piece and book; in the assistant you start it directly with Assign the rest with AI.
• Combined PDFs: if your scanner put the whole set of parts into one file, you split it into individual parts in the browser. The guide Splitting combined PDFs and A3 pages explains how.
• Missing instrument information: parts without an instrument can be assigned with AI instrument recognition, which reads the instrument name straight off the page.

Coming from another sheet music app?

Almost every sheet music app can export your music as PDFs – usually in folders by book, piece or instrument. Those are exactly the folders the assistant accepts as a Score folder. If the old software can also output an inventory list as Excel or CSV, import it first as a Score list: then composer, publisher and numbers come along, and the PDFs are routed to the right pieces during the folder import that follows.

From forScore you take the .4sc files directly; title and composer come along from forScore.

Limits and safety net at a glance

A larger archive is best split up, for example one import per music book. That keeps the review list manageable, and after the first book you see whether your structure is read the way you meant it.

Checklist for moving night

1. Create the instruments in your organisation and add common spellings as aliases.
2. Create the books with their codes – or let the import create them.
3. Import the score list, settle conflicts, file the log.
4. Import the score folder or ZIP, starting with one book.
5. Assign whatever is left under Unassigned by file name or AI.
6. Import the member list and send the invitations once everything is in place.

If you still have paper in the cupboard before the move, the guide Digitising sheet music covers the preparation and Scanning sheet music the right scanner settings.