… There appears to be nothing in the User Manual about using multiple grace notes as a unit, and I assume that the problem is the grace note EDU setting in Document Options, rather than an inability of Finale to deal with a fairly common noise …

The culprit is that you are beginning the document with multiple grace notes.

To make the grace notes work, add (at least) a beat before the beginning of the music.

You can hide this added beat, since it is for playback only.

David, can you post a picture of what you are scoring, so I can try it? Just the flute measure will be enough.

The EDU setting is for spacing, and has nothing to do with playback.

Well, I'll be. I'd have included an image in my first comment if the forum had told me that I could do so by dragging it into the comment box..

On the other hand, I sort of remember how to code the "Internet-safe" colors.

I thought MM had fixed this but IIRC, Finale sees the first beat of the first bar as beginning of the piece. The grace notes are before this 'beginning' so Finale might not see them, at least, not for playback. What happens if you insert a bar before the beginning? If this works, you can always hide the barline, remove it from measure numbering and change its width to zero.

That seems to have been the problem. I've made a second score for playback, using a pick-up measure sized to the duration of the grace notes (dotted 16th, for three 32nd-notes). As that score will be used only for playback, all that finessing will not be necessary. I hope that Make Music will eventually recognize the fact that grace notes are no less real for being tiny.

Thanks all for the prompt attention.


DF