SermonDex User's Manual

SermonDex is your online index of who preached what, when, and where. It runs in any browser on a phone, tablet, or computer — nothing to download.

• Go to sermondex.online and choose Start your library.
• Enter your email and a password, then confirm your account from the email we send.
• Sign in. Your library opens to the Browse screen.
• Optional: add SermonDex to your home screen so it opens like an app (see the Install page).

Three starter Sermons (the Sermon on the Mount) are already in every new library so you can explore — delete them whenever you like. They do not count toward your free entries.

Your first 12 Sermon entries are free. After that you can unlock unlimited entries with a subscription from the dark-red Unlock Unlimited link, or by entering an access code.

Most of your entries share the same messenger and place of ministry, so fill this in once and every new Sermon starts pre-filled.

• Open Settings in the menu.
• Enter your Default Messenger — the name that usually preaches.
• Enter your home Church / Venue, City, State, Zip, Phone, and URL.
• Enter a default Occasion if you regularly preach the same service.
• Enter Your Sermons Local Folder — the folder on your computer where sermon files are kept (for example C:\Users\You\Documents\Sermons). Bulk Import uses it to build document links automatically. Not sure of the path? Use the "How to find it" helper beside the field.
• Save. You can still change any of these on an individual Sermon entry.

The Community context section sits between Home Church and Public Library Sharing in Settings. With your home church City and Zip saved, press Populate/Re-Populate and SermonDex builds a Demographic Snapshot of the surrounding community from the latest U.S. Census data — population, age, households, income, poverty, education, race, language spoken at home, and housing — and writes it into the editable Context Data box. Use the Print button beside it for a clean copy, and re-populate any time you want fresh figures.

Settings also holds Library Reboot, a last-resort way to start over: after typing DELETE to confirm, every Sermon entry and its linked honorarium record is permanently removed. Export your library and Honorarium report first — this cannot be undone. Your Ministers, Settings, and subscription are not affected.

Choose New Sermon from the menu. Pick a category first, because it controls which fields are available.

• Preached — a message you delivered. All fields available, including Series, Honorarium, and Make This Sermon Entry Public.
• Thought — an idea you have not preached yet. A Thought may be saved with a Series instead of a title; if you leave the title empty it is saved as "No Title for This Thought." When a Thought is later preached, entering a Moved from Thought to Preached date archives the original date into Comments.
• Heard — a message you listened to someone else preach.

Fill in Sermon Title, Series (optional), Scripture with Version or Translation, Date, Occasion, Central Theme, and Sermon Quick Notes, Outlines, etc. Central Theme, Series, and Version are searchable dropdowns — start typing and pick an existing value, or add a new one. When a Series is chosen, a Part of Series number field appears beside it so you can record the message's order in the series.

Tap the microphone button beside Sermon Title, Quick Notes / Outlines, and other text fields to dictate instead of type (available in most modern browsers).

Media and Sermon Document fields hold a link or file path to your recording or manuscript. Leave them empty when nothing is available.

Press Save. On a phone the Save button sits in the bar at the bottom of the screen. Save only lights up when something has changed — and if you try to leave with unsaved changes, SermonDex asks before you go.

• Browse lists everything in your library. Use the search box for title, scripture, theme, messenger, or occasion.
• Use the category tabs to show only Preached, Thoughts, or Heard entries.
• Use the sort dropdown for Date (newest or oldest) or Title (A–Z or Z–A). The default is newest first.
• Switch between List and Calendar views to see your Sermons laid out by date.
• Badges on each row mark extras: M means media is attached, S means a sermon document, and P means the entry is public. Click M or S to open the link.
• Click an entry to open it. Use Previous and Next to move through the list, Duplicate to copy an entry, and Back to Browse to return — SermonDex remembers your spot, so you land right back on the entry you opened instead of the top of the list.

Export downloads your whole library as a CSV spreadsheet file you can open in Excel or share elsewhere.

To group several Sermons at once, select their checkboxes in Browse and choose Assign to Series.

Series collects related messages under one name. Open Series in the menu to see every series and how many entries it holds, then click one to see its Sermons.

When you open a Sermon from inside a Series, the back button reads Back to Series and deleting asks you to choose: Delete from Series (which only clears the series name) or Delete from Library (which removes the entry entirely).

The Planner helps you decide what to preach next. Pick a preaching date and it shows three lists:

• Scheduled — Sermons already dated for that day.
• Thoughts — ideas you have saved but not preached yet.
• Due for a Revisit — Preached Sermons you have not delivered in the past twelve months, longest-since-preached first.

The Minister Book is your contact directory: Minister Name, Church, Address, City, State, Zip, Phone, Email, Gift(s) and Passion(s), and Comments.

• Add a minister with the New Minister button.
• Import Multiple lets you add many ministers at once. Choose File upload to import a CSV spreadsheet, or Manual entry to type rows into a spreadsheet-style grid. Each row needs Minister Name, Church Name, Phone Number, Email Address, and Gift(s) and Passion(s). Address, City, State, Zip, and Comments are left blank for imported records so you can fill them in later.
• Import contacts from Google, Apple, or Outlook by exporting a .vcf file and using Import vCard.
• Export your ministers back out as a .vcf to load into your phone's contacts.

Bulk Import lets you move an existing list into SermonDex four ways.

• File upload — upload a CSV or JSON file exported from a spreadsheet or your old program.
• Folder upload — pick the folder on your computer where your sermon files live and SermonDex builds the list itself: the file name becomes the Sermon Title, the file's saved date becomes the Sermon Date, entries come in as Preached, and the file's location is saved as the Sermon Document link. You get an editable preview before anything is added, and you can download the list as a CSV to keep a copy.
• Paste a list — paste raw text such as titles and dates copied from a document, then check the preview before importing.
• Manual entry — type into a spreadsheet-style grid right in the browser.

Before a File Upload import runs, SermonDex asks whether to add your Home Church defaults. Choose "Add defaults & continue" to fill blank Church, City, State, Zip, Phone, URL, and Occasion fields from Settings — and if you saved Your Sermons Local Folder, it is automatically prefixed to each imported file name and written to the Sermon Document link. If no defaults are saved yet, you can jump to Settings to fill them in first.

Imported entries count toward the free 12-entry trial, so importing is paused once that limit is reached. When the trial is full, a reminder appears at sign-in with a direct link to become an Unlimited SermonDex Subscriber.

Honorarium is a money field on Preached entries only. The Honorarium page totals those amounts by year or date range for tax and record keeping, with a phone-friendly card view on small screens.

Every major view prints: Browse, a Series, the Minister Book, and the Honorarium report. Choose Print, then use your browser's print dialog to send it to a printer or save it as a PDF.

Mark a Preached entry Make This Sermon Entry Public and it appears on your public page, showing only the Sermon Title, Scripture, Occasion, and Central Theme — never your notes, contacts, or honoraria.

Set a public handle in Settings to get your shareable address, and use Public Sermons in the menu to read what others have shared.

Shared access lets someone else add entries for you without your password. Invite them by email from Settings; when they sign in they choose your library from the Working in dropdown, and everything they add is saved to your library.

• Enter the Sermon as soon as you preach it — one minute now saves an hour later.
• Use Central Theme consistently so searching by theme actually pays off.
• Duplicate is the fastest way to build out a series of related messages.
• Check the Planner each week so no sermon gathers dust too long.
• Your library syncs automatically across every device you sign in on.