Olive Tree Bible Reader helped revolutionize the study of a passage with their useful Olive Tree Resource Guide. The guide behaves like a study assistant and goes to your library and finds all the books with content related to the passage shown in the Olive Tree Bible Reader. We’ll show you how to get more out of the Olive Tree Resource Guide using the Windows version by customizing the guide to your preferences. This looks almost identical on the Mac, so you can use this guide if you run it on macOS. We’ll also give some tips for what to change in the guide.
How to Reorder the Olive Tree Resource Guide List of Resources
Before you can effectively customize the Olive Tree Resource Guide, you want to open it. You do this by clicking on the link at the lower right-hand corner of your Bible Reader window.
Now you can see the contents of the guide. You’ll also see three other tabs in the new Window that shows up on the right-hand side. Look for the four icons in the lower right corner of the program. They include:
- Resourced Guide – as shown above
- Parallel – a window to show tow books on screen at once and lists all your books in alphabetical order when you first open it.
- Notes – shows your notes.
- Search All – a search box shows up that lets you search your entire library.
Here’s a list of the contents of the guide in the order they show up by default.
- Content – shows content from the Bibles like cross references seen in verse notes indicated by an asterisk in the Olive Tree Bible text reader.
- Related Verses – shows the cross references based on translation. For example the ESV shows up in the list and when the user clicks it they will see the related verses for the passage from that translation’s notes.
- Commentaries – commentary entries for the current passage.
- Bibles – displays text of your other translations so you can see them parallel to your main window’s Bible translation.
- People – shows content about people mentioned in the passage shown in the main window.
- Places – shows content about places mentioned in the passage shown in the main window.
- Topics – shows topics from the main window passage and then shows various content from your library about that topic, like topical Bibles, dictionaries and more.
- Maps – shows maps from atlases and other books related to the main passage.
- Charts – charts from things like study Bibles and such related to main passage.
- Images – any images from your library of books related to the passage in the main window.
- Sermons – sermons from sermon collections on this current passage in the window.
- Outlines – outlines from books that contain them like commentaries.
- Introductions – book introductions from books that have introductions to each book of the Bible.
- My Notes – notes attached the current verse.
- Tags – tags you’ve created for the current passage.
- Get More – a link to a built-in store to buy more Olive Tree books.
You can customize the resource guide in one of three ways. First, you can reorder the sections. Second, you can add or remove sections. Finally you can do both of those books in each section. Here’s how to make those changes.
Click on the Settings button the Olive Tree toolbar. Then choose Advanced Settings from the drop down menu. Clicking on the Advanced Settings button will open the more advanced settings screen.
At the top you’ll notice an option to go into Advanced View. In the resulting Advanced Settings window, click on the Resource Guide from the left-hand list. You’ll see a list of the sections that show up in the guide. You can click on the buttons to turn off certain sections. Which sections you turn off depends on your preference on how to use the program.
On this screen you can turn on and off each book from each section. You can also reorder the book list by clicking and then holding down the right mouse button and then drag up or down. Click on each section from the left-hand list to change each section. Then go back using the arrow in the upper left corner to go back to the main screen.
On the main Resource Guide screen in settings you can reorder the sections by dragging them up or down.
Tips for Better Using the Resource Guide
On Settings Screen seen above, you can off the Content section. That is the first one listed above. Turn it off. Just trust me. It shows the content of all the other sections in one section, but it’s too hard to manage. It’s much more manageable to work with each section instead of this one monster section that contains all the content from every other section.
Start by turning off sections you don’t want to use. Then reorder the sections. Here’s the order I prefer…
- Commentaries
- My Notes
- Related Verses
- Introductions
- Outlines
- People
- Places
- Topics
- Maps
- Charts
- Images
- Sermons
- Bibles
I turn off Tags and Content because I don’t use them. Here’s the next step.
Hit the Advanced View link at the top of the screen. I turn off the commentaries I don’t use first and then reorder them by my preference. I usually put my more advanced commentaries first and then study Bibles after the more advanced commentaries.
Now you can turn off books you don’t use from each section. For example, from the Commentaries section, I only use a handful of my commentaries. I can still open them from the library, but I almost never do. So I turn them off here.
In some sections there’s not to reorder. You just turn them on or off.
If you own multiple sets of a commentary, you may want to turn off the ones with fewer volumes. For example, I own the New American Commentary. Instead of showing up just once, you get multiple entries. One for the Old and New Testament individually. There’s also a15, 17 and 18 volume New Testament set. The Old Testament set has one with 23 or 25 volumes. I turn off the 15 and 17 New Testament sets and the 23 volume Old Testament set. You will then see those entries in places like Introductions and Outlines as well. So, turn them off there too.
Other Settings to Change in Olive Tree
While you’re in the settings screen, click on the General Settings tab. Take a look at settings you may want to change here. Then do the same for Colors and Fonts section and the Privacy section.
As an example, I have the following settings in my General section:
- Last Opened for Default Bible for Hyperlinks
- Sync Enabled (on)
- Color Jesus words (on)
- Hide/Show Strong’ numbers set to Hide (off)
- Verses don’t start new lines (off)
- Show notes and highlights in text (on)
- Iinclude verse numbers (on)
- INclude reference (on)
- At the beginning (off)
- Place on its own line (off)
- Exclude title (off)
Notice that as you turn the above settings on or off the setting text description changes. So the list above shows whether I turn the setting On or Off.
In Colors and Fonts and in Privacy I use the default settings.
