Recover a deleted songbook

This topic describes how to recover deleted songbooks, or songbooks that are hidden.

Most of the time, all your songs are there, simply they are not displayed.

Let’s see how to show them again, in a few clicks.

Solution 1 - The songbook is excluded from the search, and hidden

One reason why you don’t see your songbook can simply be because it is marked as “hidden”.

Make sure that the option “Hide songbooks excluded from the search” is selected.

Right-click on the list of songbooks and select “Show songbooks excluded from the search”:

Solution 2 - The songbooks are there, but all/most songs are gone

The reason is probably that your song search mode is set to the following option:

– Songs with chords

Simply select the “Title and lyrics” search option, and all your songs will be instantly there again.

Solution 3 - Recover the deleted songbook

VideoPsalm stores songbooks into individual files.

Even after you delete a songbook via the “Delete” button in VideoPsalm, you can get it back easily.

To delete a songbook, select it, then press the “Delete songbook” button and confirm with “OK”:

Let’s say that you deleted a songbook, for example your “Big Song Collection”:

When you delete a songbook, VideoPsalm renames it with a .ignore file extension.

The next time when you start VideoPsalm, this songbook will not be loaded.

To get a deleted songbook back:

1. Open the VideoPsalm options and navigate to the folder where VideoPsalm stores its documents:

The usual location is:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\VideoPsalm

VideoPsalm stores the songbooks in the “Songbooks” sub-folder:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\VideoPsalm\Songbooks

If your songbook was called “Big Song Collection.vpc”, after deletion it will be called “Big Song Collection.vpc.ignore“.

2. Rename the songbook file by removing the “.ignore” file extension.

If you don’t see file extensions, tell the Windows File Explorer to display them.

By default, Windows hides the file extensions.

To complete the recover process, tell Windows to show the file extensions, via the Windows File Explorer options:

3. Restart VideoPsalm and see that your songbook is back.

Solution 4 - Get the previous version of your songbook

When you save a songbook, VideoPsalm puts aside the previous version of the songbook.

You will find it aside the songbook, with an extension .bak

If a problem happened while saving a songbook, you may be able to recover your songs from the backup version.

To load the backup of the songbook instead of the songbook (the current/broken version) itself:

1. Rename the songbook extension .vpc to .vpc.ori

(more precisely: add a .ori file extension)

That way, VideoPsalm won’t load this songbook the next time it starts.

2. Rename the songbook .vpc.bak to .vpc or (.json.bak to .json), by removing the .bak extension.

That way, VideoPsalm will load the songbook backup the next time it starts.

Note

To recover the backup of a songbook, don’t simply rename its file name.
It is important to change its file extension to something different than the regular exensions.
Regular songbooks have a file extension of .vpc or .json

For example
Let’s say that you have a songbook from which you want to recover the backup.
The songbook is called Songs.vpc
Songs.vpc <————– CURRENT songbook.

1. Rename it to (change the file extension, more precisely: add a .ori file extension):
Songs.vpc.ori <————– CORRECT: Change the file extension.

Songs ori.vpc <————– INCORRECT: Do not simply rename the name of the file.

Solution 5 - Microsoft Defender blocks you from finding your songs

If you have enabled Controlled folder access in your Windows Defender, Windows will prohibit VideoPsalm from writing (or reading) into the Public folder.

In this case, you will not be able to save your songs, settings, etc.

To stop Windows from blocking you, add VideoPsalm as an exception to the Controlled folder access of Windows Defender.

Detailed instructions here

How to Set Controlled Folder Access Exceptions

Solution 6 - VideoPsalm loads its data from the wrong folder

In the VideoPsalm options, check that the document folder is the usual one:

The standard folder is:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\VideoPsalm

Solution 7 - The songbook is nowhere to be found

Other places to look for your lost songbooks are :

Look into the Windows Recycle Bin
Somebody may have inadvertently moved your songbook into the Windows Recycle bin.
if it was not "permanently" deleted, it is easy to recover.
Find a misplaced songbook/file
Somebody may have unknowingly moved your songbook into another folder.
- Use the Windows File Explorer and search for files with the .vpc file extension.
- Look also for files with the .json extension.
Get it from a VideoPsalm backup
Someone in your team may posess a VideoPsalm backup done in the short past.
Get the songbook back from the backup.
The backup is a zip file, from where you can extract a single songbook.
Or you can make a full restore.