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Kelly Stathis Edited
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I'm not an active composer these days, but I have Finale files going back over 20 years that I'd like to preserve. While I won't be editing these compositions, I'd like to have a copy of everything I have written.

 

The last version of Finale I used was 2012, which as 32-bit software does not run on my current computer running macOS Sonoma. Fortunately, I was able to batch export everything to .mxl today using a copy of Finale v27. It's handy that this function traverses sub-directories.

 

My question is about batch export to PDF. While reimporting the .mxl files back into Finale v27 seems to work, I'm not sure how Dorico will handle the layout and articulation positioning. I realize some of this may already have been lost between Finale versions (especially for my pre-2012 files), but I'd like to get as close as possible to the originals.

 

Is there a way to do a batch export from Finale v27 to PDF, similar to the .mxl export?

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

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MIKE HALLORAN Edited
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Download the Dorico trial. It’s different but none of us will know how it will workout for you.

 

The macOS has scripting functionality that lets you write a program to do what you want. By the time you’ve finished writing and debugging it, you may think that it would be easier to open each file and click Export to PDF or Print to PDF and move onto the next. 27 fixed the Print to PDF not going to black bug introduced with 25 on the Mac.

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Kelly Stathis Edited
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Thanks Mike, that's helpful! I could probably work out an Automator solution but wanted to check if anything was already built-in/available and known to this community. I suspect I'm not the only person looking for this; if I come up with anything useful, I'll be happy to share.

 

In v27 on macOS, do you know if there a difference in the results of Print -> Save as PDF and the Graphics -> Export Pages option?

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MIKE HALLORAN Posted
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In v27 on macOS, do you know if there a difference in the results of Print -> Save as PDF and the Graphics -> Export Pages option?

 

For your purpose, no. That bug was squashed in a late build of 26 and stayed gone in 27.

 

For those with short memories, the bug was that Print to PDF gave huge greyscale files, incompatible with many laser printers and True Black was not possible. Export to PDF under the Graphics menu did give True Black. For Win users reading this, that was a Mac only issue affecting Finale 25 & 26. It may also have affected 2014/2014.5 but I no longer remember. How many threads on this subject over the last 8 years? Yikes!

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MIKE HALLORAN Posted
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