Share, print & export
A dance or a program is only half useful while it lives on one device. This guide covers every way to get your work out of Caller's Compendium — as text you can paste into an email, as a PDF you can print, or as a file you can hand to another caller — and, just as importantly, what the app deliberately leaves behind.
Finding your way around these words. On-screen buttons and screens are written in bold — like Export, Copy set list, and Continue. The first time a dance term appears it links to the Glossary, so you can get a plain-language definition without losing your place.
Looking for a copy of everything — your whole collection, your settings, your dialects — to move to a new device? That is a different job, and Backup & portability covers it.
Share a dance
Open a dance and choose Export. Three actions:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Share dance (text) | Hands a plain-text dance card to your system's share sheet — email, messages, notes, whatever you have |
| Copy dance | Puts the same text on your clipboard, and confirms with "Dance copied to clipboard." |
| Export / print PDF | Builds a PDF and opens your system's print dialog |
Export / print PDF is a real print path, not a save-to-PDF shortcut: your operating system's own dialog opens, and from there you can send it to a printer, save it as a PDF, or cancel. This works on every platform the app runs on, including Linux.
Which words a dance export uses
A dance export is written in your active dialect — the one selected in the app right now. That is what makes exports genuinely useful: hand a card to a caller and it reads the way you (and they) speak.
Note that this is the active dialect, not the dance detail screen's canonical-terms view. Switching that view changes what you see on screen; it does not change what an export contains. To export in different words, switch your active dialect first — see Dialect.
The field labels around the content — Formation, Level, Figures, Calling notes, and so on — follow the app's language setting, not your dialect.
Share a program
Open a program and choose Export. Four actions:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Share set list (text) | Hands a plain-text set list to your system's share sheet |
| Share (program + dances) | Packages the program and its dances into one file to hand to another caller |
| Copy set list | Puts the set list text on your clipboard, and confirms with "Set list copied to clipboard." |
| Export / print PDF | Builds a PDF set list and opens your system's print dialog |
The set list — text and PDF alike — is titles, event details, and slot notes. It is deliberately not a full figure-by-figure breakdown of each dance; that is what a dance card or Perform mode is for. Because a set list carries no figures, your dialect does not come into it; the labels follow your app language, as with dance exports.
If something goes wrong the app says so plainly — "Couldn't share this set list", "Couldn't export this set list" — and nothing is sent.
Share a program with its dances
Share (program + dances) is the one to reach for when you are handing an evening to another caller. It builds a single self-contained file — a .ccshare file — containing:
- the program itself;
- every dance the program's slots refer to;
- the choreographers credited on those dances; and
- the program's linked venue, if it has one.
The file goes to your system's share sheet, so how it travels is up to you — AirDrop, email, a messaging app, a USB stick.
On the receiving end, opening the file launches Caller's Compendium straight into its import review screen, loaded with the program, its dances, and its venue. Nothing is added until the recipient confirms. Bringing the same file in twice does not create duplicates: the importer matches what is already there rather than piling up copies. Plain .json files are accepted too, so an older bundle still opens.
Print the programming matrix
The programming matrix has its own PDF — it is not in the Export menu. Open a program's Matrix tab and use Export or print matrix as PDF. The button is unavailable while the matrix is empty.
The matrix PDF is laid out in landscape, uses your active dialect for the move column headings, and prints a legend along the bottom:
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
‼ | Same phrase as adjacent dance |
★ | Introduced here |
▸ | Dance's first figure |
✓ | Present |
The matrix covers dances only, so if your program includes notes or breaks the PDF says how many were left out. Hiding a column on screen is a viewing convenience and does not narrow the export — every move column prints.
What stays private
Exports are a privacy boundary, and the app treats them as one. Some things never leave, and one thing asks you first.
Never included
- A choreographer's email and location. These are marked private in the editor and are stripped out of anything you share — see Write & edit dances. The choreographer's name, website, and notes do travel.
Included only if you say so
If you export a program as a PDF or share it as program + dances, and that program is linked to a venue that has contact people recorded, the app stops and asks:
Include venue contact details in this export? These are personal contact details for the venue. They're left out of this export unless you choose to include them.
You get a tick box for each contact detail the venue actually has — up to two contacts, each with a name, phone, and email. Every box starts unticked.
- Tick only what you mean to send, then choose Continue.
- Choose Continue with nothing ticked and the export goes ahead with all contact details removed.
- Choose Cancel, or dismiss the dialog, and the whole export is called off — nothing is written, printed, or shared.
Whatever you leave unticked is genuinely absent from the file, not hidden inside it. The venue's own details — its name, address, website, schedule, price, sponsor, and notes — are not personal contact details and are always included.
You will not see this dialog when there is nothing to ask about: a program with no linked venue, or a venue with no contact people recorded, exports straight away. Text set lists and dance exports never show it either, because neither carries contact details in the first place.
A note on diagnostics
Crash reports are a separate system with its own privacy rules, and they are scrubbed by default. Settings ▸ Diagnostics explains what a report contains and what "include full detail" changes.
Exports versus backups
They are different tools for different jobs:
| Share / export | Backup | |
|---|---|---|
| Covers | One dance, or one program | Everything: dances, programs, venues, choreographers, dialects, themes, custom fields, and settings |
| Meant for | Handing to another person | Keeping safe, or moving to your own new device |
| Privacy | Private contact details stripped or opt-in | Complete — it is your own data, unredacted |
| Where | The Export menu on a dance or program | Settings ▸ General ▸ Export a backup |
Because a backup is complete and unredacted, treat a backup file as you would your own address book — it is for you, not for sharing.
Where to go next
- Build the program you are about to share: Programs & matrix
- Bring someone else's file in: Imports & migration
- Move everything to a new device: Backup & portability
- Change the words an export uses: Dialect
- Record the details that travel with a dance: Write & edit dances
Not sure what a word means? The Glossary has plain definitions for every term used across these guides.