I agree that it should behave as you've outlined but it doesn't.

The workaround is quite easy, however. Insert Measure Stack as many as this affects. Copy the notes from the old measures into the new. Make the changes you want. Delete the old measures.

I had to do this quite a bit on a file last week.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

I disagree that it should automatically behave as you've outlined.   

Finale is a composer, and it should not change what comes next -- agree!   And, what comes next is a bunch of notes already assigned to the beats I want them on.

Sometimes you do actually want to insert time between existing music that is already in the score.  A radio button in the time signature change box, and a setting  "Program Options" to select between these two as default behavior and "right now" behavior is more useful.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for responding in a way that can help me do what I need to do. However, I don't exact get it the details of your suggestion: 

I don’t quite get it: taking this simplified example

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3t25dmw62fse83h/Meter%20change%20simplest%20example.png?dl=0

1. Where would I insert a Measure Stack, and for how many bars? (If the piece goes on 100 bars.

2. What bars/beats would I copy?
a. Wouldn’t all the music starting in bar 3 need to be copied into a space starting at bar 2, beat 4?
b. If so, how would you select all staves starting at bar 2 beat 4 to the end?

Sorry if this is obvious - I keep getting the feeling it shouldn’t be such a problem…

Thanks, Burt

PS I tried uploading a 500k .png and got an error message that the site is limited to 2 MB pngs!?

Hi Jeremy,

I am not sure I understand what you have written. You agree that Finale "should not change what comes next", and what comes next you agree is "a bunch of notes". So why do you not join me in complaining when Finale inserts a rest where formerly a bunch of my notes were?

I agree with you that "sometimes" a composer wants to insert blank space in the middle of what was formely a continuous group of notes.

But can't you agree with me that "sometimes" a composer simply wants to rebar an existing succession of notes, changing only the time signatures?

Can't we all get along and agree Finale should be able to do BOTH these very simple and common things, which every sequencer has been able to do for well over 2 decades?

Hi Burt...

I do agree with you on that point.  Sometimes you have the notes in, and you decide that a different time signature would work better.  But, sometimes, I want (using your first example) to change that first measure to 5/4, and only that measure, because I want one more beat there to put something new, and I don't want everything in subsequent measures to flow back into the newly created space.  That's why I don't want your suggestion to be the only default behavior available.  I'm usually considering "what comes next" to be a measure I don't want changed.

So yes, I do believe we all DO get along -- we want Finale to be able to do both of these things.  That's why I suggested making it a toggle-able behavior (both in the options menu and the time sig. dialog box) 

Right now, I feel like the behavior you want is somewhat covered in Rebar Music, or maybe even with regular old Copy/Paste without using Measure Stack copying (thus avoiding the program copying the time signatures, and instead just pasting beat-by-beat over whatever time signatures are already present in the target area), but that Finale sometimes gets it wrong when distinguishing between default and "real" whole rests for empty measures, so any flowing of notes to their new beats seems to have different results for each staff.  Worse yet if there are multiple layers in a staff being used.  Or at least, that's how I remember the disaster playing out the last time I tried doing something like that!

Cheers,
[  ] 

Hi Jeremy,

I reread your post and see I misread it the first time! Sorry! (Not my first time misreading something, however...;) 

I too had fear and trembling when I had to paste huge sections of my piece back into Finale! I am hoping Mike has experience with how to do this safely.

Now that I see you want this feature, please consider casting a "vote" for this feature. Somewhere when I see the list of Requests there is a "vote number". I think Makemusic will give more consideration to adding this feature if I can get the vote count up.

Curently it is zero votes!

Mike, could you see your way clear to vote for a way to obviate the need for the cutting and pasting you say you are having to do?

Thanks,

Burt

Jeremy - I forgot to mention - "Rebar Music" has only ever moved notes to the right, if you change a time signature to one with fewer beats, e.g. 4/4/ to 3/4. If you have ever gotten it to move notes to the left, (3/4 to 4/4) please let me know how! It would be what I've been asking for.

To All WHo Have REsponded:

Good news! It seems Brian Mulroney at Finbale Powerusers has solved the problem by a combination of selecting certain measure and clicking the "Rebar" option.

I would love your feedback- Try it. Does it work with your more complex exaples?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/finalepower/posts/3358595017691276/?comment_id=3360679610816150&notif_id=1686524350567945&notif_t=group_comment