I'm not sure what the problem is. You seem to be suggesting that, if you enter your primary eighth notes first and then add the grace notes, all works properly.

Using a slash to join the eighths after adding the grace notes would tell Finale you wanted the grace notes on the same beam(s) as the eighths, which I doubt you do.

The problem is, that when you have a bunch of situations like this, you need to manually re-enter all notes, because Finale won't let you beam anymore once you entered grace notes.

As I understand any piece of software, it's not only about "getting there", but how fast you get there. If it wouldn't matter to Finale how fast you get somewhere, I might as well use Sibelius ;-)

Back to being serious. Finale never acts like this: using a slash to connect grace notes to real ones (as you said above). It always connects either real notes, only, or grace notes, only - which is good. 

However, I've just found out that in 4/4 it works (it beams two 8ths with some gracenotes in between), in 7/8 Finale refuses to do it, which might have something to do with how Finale does the default beaming for a certain kind of time signature.

Should be possible in any time signature, though.

I tried fiddling around with grace notes in a 7/8 ([3+4]/8 measure and did not discover a problem, not that entering it differently might not have given me different results.

Hey Adrian,

thanks for putting so much work into this. Exactly what you described isn't working over here... (v25, latest version)

Sorry it did not work for you. I hope something comes up to save you some work.

(When you define irregular measures, like a 7/8, to you use the composite screen to designate the 3+2+2 or 3+4 groupings or do you just designate 7 eighth notes?)

Sometimes this, sometimes that, depending on the material.

It doesn't work for me either.  How can one possibly make the beam go across the grace note?  I can't see any way to make that work.  This is a bug that needs to be fixed in the program, it's just that simple.  It's not good enough to say it works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't work.  Just make it work all the time and then we wouldn't need to file feature requests, would we?

The beams of the main notes automatically disconnect when you add the grace note in the middle.  This should not happen.

I perhaps understand the problem for me: the grace note needs to be a different duration from the surrounding notes, because I need to hide the tale inside the notehead (I just want a notehead, no stem or tail-- this is to achieve a standard notational practice used in Chinese guzheng music).  I can only achieve an isolated notehead if the grace note duration is a quarter note (otherwise there is a tail which always sticks out of the notehead when you try to hide the stem inside the notehead).  I wonder if there is a way of selecting just this individual note and change it to a stemless (and tailless) notehead?

I've fixed it by using special tools beam angle and beam extension, to manually extend the beam over the gracenote.  

… I've fixed it by using special tools beam angle and beam extension, to manually extend the beam over the gracenote …

Another fix (which might be faster):

Use for the grace note the smaller (flagged) duration that allows for the connected beam.

Then, use Special Tools Tool, sub-tool Custom Stem Tool, to replace the grace note stem by an empty shape.

This step will replace not only the stem, but also the flag.

You can use the empty shape again and again when you have created it.

JW Change did it, easily.

Thanks, the custom stem option is very simple and easy, thank you!  

As for JW Change, is that a person?  Or a function in Finale?

… JW Change, is that a person?  Or a function in Finale? …

JW Change is one of the many third party plug-ins by Jari Williamson.

You can find them on Jari’s web site:

http://www.finaletips.nu/ 

The JW plug-ins are free, but Jari accepts (and deserves) donations.

The JW plug-ins are free, but Jari accepts (and deserves) donations.

What Peter said. Make sure you download the proper version: 32 or 64 bit.

I'm afraid I'm back again with a problem.  I can't make the quavers beam together here.  How do I hide the tails of the eighth notes so that I can use the beam extension tool to join them together?

I've got this far now: 

1. I tried this method, which DOES NOT WORK: create a custom stem for the eight notes which lacks the tail, then try to use the beam extension tool to draw a beam across.  The beam extension tool does not consider there to be any beams to extend, and therefore it doesn't work.

2. I've made the grace notes sixteenths, and then used the beam extension tool to hide the second beam indicating the 16th note duration, so it looks like eight notes.  But now the final step is impossible: I cannot make the final F sharp separate from the previous notes.  

Does anyone have any suggestions please?

Disregarding the lack of accidentals, etc., is this what you want?