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I had to copy an entire score from a Finale 2007 document to Finale 25 (Win10), and everything worked well except the percussion line, which was all messed up. I had to use Utilities > Transpose Percussion Notes to get the snare drum notes to the second space down and the bass drum notes to the bottom space (as is standard).

Now it seems the bass in layer 2 won't line up with the snare in layer 1, but instead has all notes positioned about 1.5 notehead-widths to the right of where they should be. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like:

Does anyone know how to fix this without me having to re-enter the entire 135-measure percussion line from scratch?

Thanks in advance for any solution you can offer.

   David in Mississippi

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Try the Note Position Tool from the Special Tools Palette. With Layer 2 is selected: click on the measure, select all of the handles, and hit <backspace> on your computer keyboard. Repeat for the remaining measures.

 

If there are a lot of measures like this, you can respace a selection with the "Clear" option selected:

 

 

Select the region of the part you want to respace and hit <4> on your keyboard. You should then change the "Manual Position" settings back to "Ignore."

 

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This is actually a shortcoming in Finale. Notes a second apart are offset correctly, but if Manual Positioning is set to Incorporate or Ignore, transposing the offset notes won't reposition them properly. As George Mohammed showed, setting MP to Clear will take care of the problem but it will also undo any manual positioning you've done elsewhere. The upshot of all this is that using Finale efficiently necessitates a good workflow. In this case, it means that when entering notes, set Manual Positioning to Clear and perhaps even turn on Automatic Music Spacing in Preferences (with Automatic Update Layout turned on at ALL times!). Then, only after having entered articulations, expressions, smart shapes and lyrics, turn off Automatic Music Spacing, set Manual Positioning to Incorporate, and start tweaking and working on the layout.

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@George Mohammed THANK YOU.

I had dried clearing manual positioning in the document options before with no luck, but with no luck. I had no clue about needing to type <4> on my keyboard. That did the trick. Wherever did you find out that obscure keyboard stroke?

 

Before doing that, however, I took the precaution of selecting layer 2, then "Show Active Layer Only."  I don't know if this caused Finale to undo the few other manual repositionings I had made, but thought it might have been worth the precaution.

 

@VAUGHAN SCHLEPP thank you for that response also. I've been using Finale since 1995 and am still confused by the automatic vs. manual positioning mess, partially because of being unable to find good tutorials on the subject. Now, some 23 years later, I'm still learning things about Finale.

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There are keyboard shortcuts for many of Finale's functions and most of us have created others via the OS and/or a macro program. The function being referred to here is Utilities/Music Spacing/Apply Note Spacing to Current Part/Score. If you look there, you'll see the shortcut listed. Surely you must have seen this; I don't believe it has changed (much) since 1995. If you don't have Automatic Music Spacing (in Preferences) selected, it's the only way you'll get Finale to space the music. (There's also beat spacing, activated by pressing 5.)

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P.S. Have you looked in the Finale User Manual under Music Spacing? There you'll find all the information you need, including what's been said here. Turning on Automatic Music Spacing for entering notes and then turning it off for tweaking is a logical step. Unfortunately, as far as Incorporate and Ignore are concerned, Finale isn't always consistent about what it incorporates into it's spacing routines.

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