OpenLP: Presenting the service

Presenting the service

This is a quick reminder of what to do. It assumes you have read and acted on the Preparing the desktop page first.

Activate the service plan

Double-click on the first item in the plan shown in the Service manager panel. Note that it turns grey and the item is displayed on the screen.

Move through the items as required

The two keyboard keys you will use most are the down arrow and right arrow as shown above.

But they will only work if the plan is 'active', which it won't be if you have clicked elsewhere. Unfortunately there is no clear indication on your display that the plan is or isn't active. If the current item is shown with a blue background then it isn't active, but if it's shown with a grey background then it may or may not be active.

If you find you have deactivated the plan, here are a few ways to reactivate it:

• If the item being shown on the screen is a single frame or the first frame of several, just double-click on the item in the plan
• If the item being shown is the second (eg verse) or subsequent frame of an item you have two options:
  • Click on the > shown to the left of the item in the plan, and a list of the frames will appear: double-click on the one that is currently being shown
  • Use the green arrow-heads shown above the bottom-right window in the live panel to move through subsequent frames of the current item, and then double-click on the next item in the plan

There are many other ways: you might like to experiment beforehand.

Slide presentations

If the presenter uses the clicker, s/he can advance slides in the usual way. If you are advancing the slides, use the down arrow (↓) key (or the up-arrow (↑) to move back).

Blanking the screen

If for any reason you need to blank the screen the icon showing a black screen between the panes of the live panel will do that. Clicking on it again, or displaying an item from the plan will unblank it.

OpenLP tutorial

• Introduction
• Creating a service plan:
  • The OpenLP desktop
  • Creating a new service plan
  • Adding songs to the plan
  • Adding a new song to the library
  • Adding Bible readings to the plan
  • Adding slide presentations to the plan
  • Adding images to the plan
  • Adding sound or video items to the plan
  • Adding custom slides to the plan for announcements or liturgy
  • Making changes to the service plan
  • Extracting song words from a service plan
• Running a service plan:
  • Preparing the desktop
  • Presenting the plan
  • Dealing with surprise requests
• Other matters:
  • Installing OpenLP on your computer

External documentation

• The OpenLP user manual