I enjoy using Accordance, it’s flexible and I can set up the program quickly to accomplish whatever task I have in hand with a click or two (I save my workspaces).  I have a workspace for Greek, one for Hebrew, and one for when I’m doing English searches to find a quick reference or review something.  Most of my time, however, is spent in my Greek and Hebrew workspaces working on sermons.  I don’t claim to be a language scholar.  I know enough to make connections and spot trends, and my Greek is far better than my Hebrew, but I continue to translate my passages week after week because the act of doing so forces my brain to look at the text from a different light.  I can’t skim over important shifts with the thought, “Yah, I know this.”  It’s a very good spiritual, as well as an academic, discipline for me.  I used to do my translations in my word processor while skipping back and forth between the text in Accordance and my work – which got tedious from the very start – so I started using User Tools to not only keep track of my translations, but also my thoughts and comments on the passages as well.  I collect these thoughts into one user tool per sermon series or liturgical season and can access them through my library window.  I leave my current user tool open on my workspace, and when I shift to a new series I open the new tool and re-save my layout (actually, for a couple of weeks before I shift I have two User Tools open at any one time, because I like to translate ahead a few weeks).  With this set-up,  not only do I refrain from the madness of constantly switching apps, I also can go back to my sermon notes and see what I was thinking while prepping a message. It’s win all around for me. Typically speaking, I actually only rarely view my thoughts in the main accordance window.  Instead, I tend to leave the tool editor open so I can type and make changes to what I’m working on.

I’m pretty sure I’m not using the User Tools the way they were envisioned, but that’s what I like about Accordance.  If I want to lay something out in a way that the good folks who work on the program never dreamed up, I can.  It’s very nice. Below is an image of my Greek Workspace.