Before you can hide the empty staff “locally”, take a look at the staff group’s Group Attributes.

In the pop up menu “When Hiding”, choose “Hide Normally”.

To hide a staff “locally”, use a staff style.

Thanks so much

Peter if you are still there!

Could you list the steps needed to do your second option?

"To hide a staff “locally”, use a staff style."

I am using V27.3, but see no Staff Style to switch a grand staff to a sing staff

Burt Goldstein,

This is a misunderstanding.

There is no “second option”.

Rather the custom staff style is Step 2 of the first (and only) option.

First, in the Group Attributes, allow hiding only one staff (= choose “Hide Normally”).

Next, hide the staff “locally”:

Staff Tool.

Select the measures you need to hide.

Context-click the selected.

In the context menu, choose the staff style.

If you need to hide all the measures in a specific system, use the staff style “13. Hide Staff (and Collapse)”.

If you do not need to hide all the measures in that system, instead use the staff style “12. Force Hide Staff (Cutaway)”.

Peter Thomsen,

Terrific! Thank you - works like a charm.

I read many other descriptions of how to do this yet was unable to see how to do it until now.

I only have Style 12 "Hide Staves"; 13 and 14 are missing from the list! (I just reinstalled Finale with the same result. Any idea what to do about this?

Not urgent as the results are exactly what I needed!

Thanks again,

Burt

… I only have Style 12 "Hide Staves"; 13 and 14 are missing from the list! (I just reinstalled Finale with the same result. Any idea what to do about this? …

Staff Styles are document specific (not program specific).

Which means that different Finale documents can have different staff styles.

Also, you can create your own, custom staff styles.

You can save a document’s staff styles as a Library you can load into other documents.

File menu > Save Library…

Finale comes with some ready made (default) Libraries you can load into your documents.

File menu > Load Library…

One of the default Libraries is a Library with staff styles.

If you load it, you may get the “missing” staff styles 13 and 14.