When opening a Finale file I downloaded from the internet, all notes are changed to letters

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Miriam Means Posted April 26, 2017 16:36

I have Finale 2014.5 and I am a Windows 10 user.

I downloaded a file from IMSLP.org and when I opened the file in Finale, all of the note heads turned into letters. The key signature turned into "&" and "?." Dynamics and expression markings stayed the same. The file has a ".musx" extension

Is there a way to change them back to notes?

The piece is called "Grand Septet" by Franz Berwald.

Thank you for your help with this.

5 comments

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PETER THOMSEN Posted April 26, 2017 17:10

This is a font problem.

You wrote:

“ The key signature turned into "&" and "?." ”

You probably mean that

“ The clefs turned into & and ? ”

- right?

The reason why you get “wrong glyphs” could be that

- you do not have the music font that is used in the Finale document from IMSLP,

- you do have the necessary music font, but the font is not correctly installed.

Miriam Means Posted April 26, 2017 17:23

Yes, you are correct about it being the clefs that changed. How do I find out what music font was used in the document before? How do I find out if my fonts are correctly installed?

Bruce Kling Posted April 26, 2017 17:42

The music font is set to Helvetica, which of course is not a music font at all. Open the file, and under the Document Menu > Set Default Music Font choose Maestro. That will fix things.

Miriam Means Posted April 26, 2017 23:11

I tried what you said and it worked perfectly. Thank you!!

PETER THOMSEN Edited April 29, 2017 14:03

Bruce Kling wrote:

“The music font is set to Helvetica, which of course is not a music font at all.”

My guess is that Helvetica is used as as “generic” substitute for any font that was installed on the computer where the document was first created, but is not installed on the computer where you open the document.

In this example let us say that a Finale document was created using the Sonata font - and the Sonata font was installed on the computer where the document was first created.

This means that the document displays correctly - with clefs, noteheads, &c. - when the document is opened on a computer where Sonata is installed.

When the same document is opened on a computer where the Sonata font is not installed, then clefs, noteheads, &c. will display in a “generic” font.

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