There are a few elements that you’ll want to check if you’re having trouble hiding empty staves (formerly known as optimizing systems) in your Finale score.
Hidden staves are visible in Scroll View so you will need to be in Page View to see the end results that you’re looking for.
In order to hide empty staves they must contain Default Whole Rests so we’ll want to make sure that you’re working with those instead of real whole rests. You can take these steps to restore the default whole rests of a measure if real whole rests were manually entered into the part:
- Select a region with the Selection tool .
- Choose Plug-ins > Note, Beam, and Rest Editing > Change to Default Whole Rests
Group Attributes can also prevent certain staves from being hidden as well. We’ll want to make sure that any staves that you’re having trouble with are not part of groups preventing hidden staves:
- Select the Staff tool
- Right-click/CTRL+click the group handle for the problematic staff and select Edit Group Attributes
- Select Hide Normally in the When Hiding Empty Staves menu
- Press OK
- Repeat for any other groups that the staff may be a part of.
- If the staves do not hide themselves after this, navigate to the first page of the score and click once in the space to the left of the staff in question. All the measures of that staff should be selected.
- With the Staff Tool still selected, right-click/CTRL+click the handle next to that staff's clef and select Hide Empty Staves.
Please submit a ticket with the file attached for our team to review if you're still having trouble hiding staves in your document. You can select Submit a request above to reach out to the Customer Support team.