Hi Jerry,

First, make sure you've reviewed the tutorial dealing with part layout, and the quickstart videos. There are several factors which create the "look" of a part and it's best to understand the complete process.

To answer your specific question, the quickest way to move measures to a different system: switch to the selection tool, on the system with 10 measures click once to highlight the 7th measure, now press the down arrow once. The 7th-10th measures should now have moved down to the last system.

Another method is to highlight both of these last two systems, then under the Utilities menu, choose "fit measures", choose "lock layout with 6 measures per system, then hit okay.

Hope this helps

Jeffrey --

First, let me thank you for your prompt response it was most appreciated.  I went through the tutorials, and viewed the videos and they were most helpful.  I was able to fix the current issue I was having, but they did bring up a couple of questions.

1.  The Music Spacing feature (Utilities -> Music Spacing -> Apply Note spacing...) seems to only work once - by that I mean I only see the dialog box once.   After that - no dialog; just seems to do something, but no opportunity to change anything.  I tried unlocking the staves too, but no difference in operation.  Is this as designed?

2.  What I would like to have is the ability to take a range of measures (over several lines), and be able to move it as needed.  The up/down arrow is part of this, but the need is a bit more flexibility so that I can establish locations for page turns at a convenient place.  Is the up/down arrow the only way to do this?  (I have already used the compression feature successfully, that's part of this too).

3.  As I was creating parts, I poked around in the creation dialogs, and found the ability to change the size of the headers for the first stave.  (Document -> Manage Parts >>Part Creation Preferences  >> Page Format for parts).  It is self explanatory.   What I was wondering was if there was a way to access this information on individual parts.   In my experience, the size needs of a given part is not a constant - one instrument will have a more robust part than another.   The header is a place where some "space" could be found to keep the number of pages down.   Said another way - part A has 12 staves, and goes to one line on page 2, part B has 7 staves, and fits nicely on one page.  The header spacing is 1.5 inches - more than enough to steal room for an extra stave.  I want to change the 1st stave header margin in it, but leave the others alone.   Can it be done?  It appears that I could manually balance the placement of the staves on Part B, but not overlay white space in the header. 

Thanks in advance

Jerry

Jerry,

1.  There's really no need to use Utilities-Music Spacing. Under your preferences, there's an option to leave automatic music spacing on. It's constantly re-spacing the music as you make edits behind the scene. If you turn that option off, you can highlight the whole piece, or just a section and press "4". That will apply music spacing to the highlighted area.

2. The up/down arrow moves measures between systems, but leaves the systems intact. If for instance you have 10 systems on a page, but want your page turn to occur after system 8, then under the page layout menu, choose edit system margins and add space between systems 1-8, adding enough space which will push system 9 to the next page.

3. Same answer as #2, use edit system margin on an individual basis in a part to change the amount of space for a header.

To add to what Jerry T said, the Page Format for Parts is just a beginning. You can change a lot of features on a given linked part (note duration/pitch excepted, for example) without altering either the score or other parts, except that the altered info should turn orange to indicate that it is not longer linked to the score/part (so you'll know). You can always right-click an unlinked item and tell it to relink.

Thank you both for your responses.   I am in the middle of parts creation for a Brass Choir work, so your assistance has been most helpful.  Experience is a good thing!

Jerry