Don Clark,

I could be wrong here, but instead of picking the desired fretboard diagram I think that you should edit the default fretboard diagram.

When you are in the Chord Tool, context-click the chord handle.

In the context menu, choose “Edit Fretboard…”.

I've tried this, clicking on the Edit Fretboard command, finding the kind of desired chord I want, and clicking Generate, and then okay. But the chord symbol in my document did not change

You wrote:

“clicking on the Edit Fretboard command, finding the kind of desired chord I want …”.

What do you mean by your words “… finding the kind of desired chord I want …” ?

Please explain your step(s).

What works for me, is editing the fretboard diagram, using the (sub-)tool palette displayed in the left side of the Fretboard Editor.

Thanks for helping me with this problem. What I'm trying to do is substitute, for the purposes of this example, the basic open position C chord with another one--say the barred "A" form positioned at the third fret. I've tried to do this two ways:

1) I double click on a note in a document to invoke the Chord Definition tool. When it comes up, I click on the Select button in the middle of the screen. After I do that I see a screen with some other chord diagrams. I click on the one I want, click okay. Go back to the Chord Definition screen and click okay. Then the new diagram is pasted onto my document above the original open C diagram, which is not replaced with the new one but remains. In some cases I've ended up with two readable diagrams--one above the other--or most recently the new one is pasted partly over the original chord, making both diagrams unreadable.

2) Or, I start the same way, and once I get the Chord Definition tool, I click instead on the Create button. When that opens up I again see some diagrams, I select the one I want. Hit okay, hit okay again when I get back to the Chord Definition tool, and once again it pastes an extra diagram rather than replacing the one I started with.

That is the way Finale works (and the way other users expect Finale to work):

Your steps will add an extra fretboard diagram without affecting the original diagram already present in your layout.

I suggest that you first remove the original diagram from your layout (= select the diagram’s handle, and hit delete).

Then, add the new diagram.

There you go. Thanks much. I knew it was something really obvious I wasn't thinking of