How to Customize the Copy Bible Verse Tool in Logos

As a pastor or Bible teacher, you probably copy portions of the Bible into sermons, blog posts, academic papers, or Bible study notes all the time.

Recently I had a very specific Bible-copying need: I had to have the entire KJV New Testament text, one chapter at a time, with one verse per line, a verse number in front of each line, then a space, and no other formatting—no book names, italics chapter numbers, extra hard returns, footnotes, headings, nothing.

Thankfully, the Logos Copy Bible Verses tool is totally customizable. And flexible: whether you’re writing a sermon, preparing a collection of topical passages, or making a piece of art, you’ll find this versatile tool helpful every time you’re quoting Scripture. I’ll show you how.

A specific Bible-copying project

The Logos Copy Bible Verses tool has quite a number of useful presets, and I use them all the time. I can copy text fully formatted, or copy one verse per line (though this option wasn’t quite right for me for reasons I’ll explain). I can copy Scripture as a quotation, or in simple paragraphs, or—and I love this one—as “Bible text only.” You will definitely want to play with all these options so you know what they all do:

But none of these were precisely what I needed for a recent project, a KJV Parallel Bible (long story). “One verse per line” added the book and chapter and translation at the top to my copied Bible text, and I wanted pure Bible text with just verse numbers, like this:

So I edited the “One verse per line” style in the Copy Bible Verses tool, like so:

I changed the name of the style to “KJV Parallel Bible” so I could find it easily later while working on my project. Then I used some very basic HTML skills to edit the template. I took out the header, which was giving me the book name and reference, and I took out the tags which were making the verse numbers superscript.

Now when I need to generate a new text file, I type in the reference, hit copy, and paste it right in.

Make your own custom presets

You can make whatever custom presets you want. And you don’t have to learn arcane HTML codes. Here’s my suggestion: pick the most detailed presets, the one including all the HTML codes, such as “Fully Formatted” and “One verse per line,” and use those codes to construct what you need.

Here are a few suggested styles:

The “Oration” styles are for public reading of Scripture, and when I read the Bible in public I want simple paragraphs with no verse numbers. So I altered the “Orations” style to exclude verse numbers. I copy the text, paste it into the Notes app on my Mac, and it’s there on my iPad ready for me on Sunday morning. (I have also used the “Bible Text Only” feature in Logos to do this, but pasting the text in advance ensures that I read only the text allotted to me. Here’s the code.
If you are making a list of memory verses that require quotation marks and verse references and translation abbreviation inside parentheses, this is easily done. Here’s the code.
If you want to put the verse references in italics on the line below the verse, that’s easily done, too. Here’s the code.

You can perform all this formatting later, after you’ve pasted 52 memory verses into a Word document. Or you can set up the formatting on the front end and get exactly what you need every time.

Only you know your specific needs. But the Copy Bible Verses tool is here to meet them.

Mark L. Ward, Jr. received his PhD from Bob Jones University in 2012; he now serves the church as a Logos Pro. He is the author of multiple high school Bible textbooks, including Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption.