… How the heck do I show the measures here? …

You can attach here a graphic that shows the layout, you need to create.

The better we understand, the better we can help.

It would be a help to know the actual context:

What are (all) the rhythmical values in the first measure?

What are (all) the rhythmical values in the second measure?

Set it up as a 4/4 measure, displaying as 2/4, and use an expression as the bar line. It's not truly balanced mathematically, but who's counting?

I don't think this notation is good  for lots of reasons. There's a similar passage from Tchaikovsky, yes it's 8ths, but you get the idea. The "pick up" needs to be written as a triplet in the first measure and the down beat in the next also needs to be part of a triplet. As a player, I'd freeze up in that 2nd bar until I figured out what the composer wanted, Tchaik makes it quite clear:

Indeed. In Mike's mock-up, the measure lengths aren't really correct. One quarter + one eighth + one eighth triplet doth not a 2/4 measure make! Same with the next measure...

As a performer, I would have no problem sight-reading the Tchaikovsky.

Although there's no problem with changing the first two notes of the second measure to a quarter, tying them as eighth notes (under the triplet bracket) makes the intent even easier to read. 

OK... dumb questions... 

How do I create a graphic.  Finale doesn't save as a graphic image, and I can't find anything that will paste a copy of an musx file into it. I tried WORD and Paint in windows. 

The idea is... have an eighth note at the end of one measure and a quarter note at the start of the next measure and "triplet" them together. Either I don't fully understand what you guys are saying, or you don't understand my problem.

If I use expressions as bar lines won't I have to put them in the entire song? I will have to do this is various places in my song. That seems annoying and tedious. But then I'm not sure how much work it is to put the expressions in. And how do I get FINALE to ignore the 2/4 setting?

How about this solution.

I use speedy to enter notes, so in the speedy options I uncheck "check for extra notes". Then,  enter what you see in my first example. The 2nd measure has a hidden 8th rest on beat 1.

Then with special tools note mover, I manually drag the quarter note to beat one in the 2nd measure.

Mathematically speaking, the quarter note gets played before beat one of the 2nd measure so this isn't an accurate visual representation of what's played.

Save a screen shot as a .jpg or .png (pdf doesn't work).  When you've saved the picture, use the Insert window at the top to add it to a post.

I no longer remember how to do this in Windows but I know you can.

We understand your problem just fine. Why don't you use Tchaikovsky's solution presented by Martin Haub above? It is correct and can easily be created in Finale. The solution by Mike and Jeffrey is simply wrong: neither measure has the correct number of beats. The first has too few and the second is overfilled. 

Here's the way you should create a triplet which spans two measures.

Vaughan's graphic isn't what the OP wants. He want the triplet to start on the fourth eighth note in the measure.

The easiest accurate way to do this is instead of using two 2/4 measures, write it as one 4/4 measure. Then the triplet will completely occur within a measure and you won't have to deal with any of this triplets across barline nonsense.

… have an eighth note at the end of one measure and a quarter note at the start of the next measure and "triplet" them together …

To understand the issue we need to know the full rhythmical context:

1) What are the rhythmical values in the first measure, before the eighth note?

2) What are the rhythmical values in the second measure, after the quarter note?

It would help a lot if you attached a graphic showing the layout, you need to create.

This forum allows for several graphic formats, such as GIF, JPG and PNG.

HOW do I copy/paste part of a musx file into a graphic format. I am in windows 7 with Finale 2014.5. It won't paste into WORD or PAINT. I can put it into a pdf file, but then it won't let me do a copy! I tried to paste it into WORD and I got a previous copy/paste effort ! It looks like I couldn't even do a copy from Finale !! 

1. Choose the panel you wish to copy.
2. Press ALT+PrtScn to copy the visual of the active panel onto the Clipboard
3. Open Paint (included w/ WIndows 7)
4. Paste the image from the clipboard for editing, resizing and saving (.png is a preferred format)
5. Click on the "Mountain" icon above to attach the saved image to a message.

I now mine isn't right! I even said so!

You could also just write it as a 4/4 measure.

… HOW do I copy/paste part of a musx file into a graphic format. I am in windows 7 with Finale 2014.5 …

With the Graphics Tool you can export a selected area - or entire pages - in several graphic formats.

When you are in Finale’s Graphics Tool, you have the Graphics menu where you can specify your export.

The title is ironic huh?  lol  The two notes I want to "triplet" is between the 2 triplets shown. I can't put a quarter note in the 2nd bar as its written, but I want it to be a quarter note. I am in FINALE 2014.5 and Windows 7. 

The fifth full bar has one of those offbeat triplets that are really, really difficult for musicians. There's even Youtube video about it: 

So to keep the math right, what you should write is something like this. 3 8ths in place of 2. Then you have to manually put in the triplet brace.

As Mike and I both suggested, write it in 4/4, end of problem.

Lou Pagano,

Here is one way to do it.

Note that this solution works across a system break (as you can see).

Thank you guys. I appreciate the efforts. Mike and Jeff. I tried to change the time signature to 4/4. The chords moved, but each measure still showed 2 beats each !! I'm early enough in the game that I can do this over again manually in 4/4 and see how that will work, but if I was well into the piece, it would be more than annoying. In Finale 2014.5 it looks like there may be a bug? I'll try these and see how they work.