Finale 25 – Page Margin Discrepancies When Printing

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PETER MCLAREN Posted September 28, 2016 00:49

I’ve just installed the upgrade to Finale 25 on my Mac (OS X El Capitan 10.11.6) and am finding I’m getting a page margin discrepancy of about 8mm in the horizontal dimensions (i.e. a setting of 10mm at the top of the page results in a space of 2mm, cutting off the top of the title; setting the bottom margin to 15mm results in a 23mm gap). I’ve checked the page size (A4) in the Page Layout menu, and I’ve checked the paper size in the File menu. I’m printing on an HP Officejet Pro 8600. (Interestingly, if I set the A4 page size to the ‘borderless’ option, the top and bottom margins are closer to the the specified margin settings but the overall document has been slightly expanded and the print quality is not as good, not to mention incredibly slow to print.)

Any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

10 comments

Date Votes

Gregg Sewell Edited September 28, 2016 16:30

I'm seeing the same error.

I work for a major U.S. publisher of choral music. The industry standard page size for choral octavos is roughly 7 x 10 inches. My particular company uses 7.125 x 10.5 inches. When I set File > Page Setup… to a custom size with these dimensions and select the same custom size in the Finale Print dialog, the resulting PDF is too high on the page.

This happens whether I make a PDF or a PostScript file and manually distill it.

I've checked everything I can think of. Settings are the same for Finale > Page Layout > Page Size… and Finale > File > Page Setup… as well as the Paper Size drop-down menu in the Finale 25 Print dialog.

The attached image shows the result of rigorously following the proper procedures for making a PDF and also for making a PostScript file in both Finale 25 and Finale 2014.5.

MakeMusic has posted an article in the Finale Knowledge Base that addresses this issue (link below), but following the recommended steps did nothing to fix the problem.

bit.ly/Fin25-pdfbit.ly/Fin25-pdf

For the record, I quit both versions of Finale (2014.5 and 25) and deleted a printer in the Printer & Scanners section of the macOS System Preferences, then installed a new instance of the printer and repeated all of the testing above. The results were the same before and after.

I did this on an iMac with macOS 10.12 (official release, not Public Beta) installed. My Production Supervisor did this on an iMac with OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan installed. The results are the same for each configuration.

Peter, I feel your pain. This bug renders Finale 25 unusable for my company, since our stock in trade is selling hundreds of choral octavos in the 7 x 10-inch size each year. We have a team of music engravers and editors who make dozens of PostScript and PDF files from Finale every working day of the week.

Finally, I’m going to submit all that I’ve said here to Customer Support, as my Production Supervisor has already done. I encourage you to do the same, since the best way to get MakeMusic to act quickly on an issue like this one is to make sure they hear from a chorus of users who are experiencing the problem.

Here’s the link to Customer Support.

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Let me know if you discover any work-arounds, Peter, and I’ll do the same for you.

All best,

Gregg Sewell
Music Editor and Engraver
GIA Publications, Inc.
Chicago, IL

--------------

macOS Sierra
Version 10.12

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)
2.9 GHz Intel Core i5
8 GB RAM

Finale Version 25.0.0.7722

PETER MCLAREN Posted September 28, 2016 22:28

Thanks, Gregg, for your detailed and comprehensive response. It seems that you’ve exhausted just about all possible remedies.

Prior to upgrading to Finale 25 my printer output matched the dimensions specified in the document.

The most reliable ‘work-around’ that I’ve found so far (and I’ve only been using the new version of Finale for a couple of days) is to add 8mm to the setting for my ‘top’ margin in the document settings and subtract 8mm from the ‘bottom’ setting. It works, but I’m not looking forward to having modify all my existing documents each time I need to print them (I work as a music teacher and I’m constantly printing documents from my accumulated teaching files for my students).

I’m just about to install the new Sierra OS, but don’t expect this to make any difference.

I’ll follow your suggestion and petition Customer Support as well and see if anything comes from that. We’ll keep it touch.

Regards

Peter

PETER MCLAREN Posted October 15, 2016 03:38

Hello, Gregg…

I hope you’re still following this discussion — it seems that we’re the only two that it’s relevant to!

I eventually got in touch with customer support and this was the advice I received:

Kevin M. (MakeMusic)

Oct 6, 15:18 MDT

Hello Peter,

Thanks for contacting MakeMusic Customer Success. I can certainly help you with that. What we have found is that Sierra is imposing it's page size into Finale. If you go to Page Setup (File > Page Setup) and add a custom size you'll want to change the non-printable area as .11 all the way around. This should change the non-printable area for all of the page styles. If you find this adjustment does not quite meet you'll simply need to adjust this custom setting until it fits.

Please let me know if this gives you any trouble and I'll be happy to help.

I hope this information helps!

Best regards,

Kevin M. | Customer Success Manager | MakeMusic, Inc.

I followed the advice and this appears to have sorted out the problem. I hope it may be helpful to you as well.

Regards & best wishes

Peter

Andrew McManus Edited January 03, 2017 20:53

I just posted about this exact same problem, so it's not just you two out there. I appreciate the help!

Aidan Menuge Posted January 21, 2017 05:57

I have the exact same problem, but I do not have Sierra, so I'm not sure that is the full answer (running El Capitan). Really, there should be a better solution than creating a custom page resize.

NICHOLAS GOLOWATYI Posted January 21, 2017 12:15

I had a similar problem but my margin discrepancies were far worse. My left margin was centered on the page.

When I updated my Mac OS, I assumed the driver was being updated as well, it wasn't. Turns out that my print driver version was not up to date. After updating the driver, the problem disappeared.

BRANDON PEDIGO Posted February 23, 2017 16:36

I am having the same problem with the top page margin. I thought the reason Finale went to this new name of Finale instead of Finale 2017 is so they could save the large upgrades for longer periods of time but constantly update with small fixes along the way. I'm surprised this hasn't been fixed by now.

Sheena Phillips Posted April 10, 2017 17:01

Thank you. Creating a custom page size worked for me, too, with Finale 25 and Mac OS Sierra. But it would be great if MakeMusic could make printing work automatically.....

Jerod Tate Posted April 11, 2017 21:28

I am running Yosemite and have the same problem. Like Gregg said, this is a deal breaker for me. I will stay with 2014.5 until I hear that this specific problem has been fixed. Looking forward to checking this feed for the good news, if it comes.

Ward Baxter Edited March 23, 2018 18:26

Similar issues. My right barlines are cut off in v25. They're just fine in v2014.5. This is happening in El Cap, Sierra, and High Sierra. I have both versions installed on all 3 Operating Systems. This is NOT something imposed by the operating system. This is Finale 25 not behaving like Finale 2014.5 or any predecessor. Just one more case of something in this god-forsaken software that was working fine that we have to try and find a workaround.

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