Page Layout > Page Size on a Mac

… At one time I thought that I selected "Document... Page Format... Score" and simply changed the page size but now when I do that nothing happens …

A change in Page Format settings will affect all new pages.

Already existing pages are not affected.

This is by design, and what Finale users have requested.

To update already existing pages with the new settings, use the Page Layout Tool:

Page Layout menu > Redefine Pages > …

Before running redefine pages, I would make a backup copy of this file. If your score is complete, you will lose a lot of your formatting and manual adjustments.

Another option is to leave everything as is, and in your printer page setup DBX, choose your 9 x 12 paper size and change the scaling to maybe 110%.

"Page layout > Redfine pages" does not give me the option of changing the page size.  For some reason it increases the size of the music without offering any options which is not at all what I wanted.

Is it really true that the original page size you selected is permanent and can't be changed?  Doesn't sound like professional publishing software to me.

I had thought about hacks like printing to 9x12 and scaling the music but that's not really what I want either.  I want the music to stay the same size as it is on 8-1/2x11 but to reformat layout of staves and measures so a few more might fit on a page. 

Of course the page size can be changed. If you set your "Page format for Score" to what you want, then run redefine pages, it will change.

Another option is with the page layout tool. Click on page 1, the dialog box appears, change the page size to 9 x 12. The select change all pages. Using this method all existing pages will change, but any new pages added to your score would be 8.5 x 11 and need to also be changed.

Okay... I see now that it's a two-step process.  It's surprising that when you change the size of a page the content and actual size does not change.  It's counter-intuitive.

The problem still is that when I "redefine pages" the content resizes without giving me any options first and which is not what I want.  The staves, notes etc. should stay the same size but they don't. 

When you change the size of a page, everything on that page changes by the same percentage which is logical. Now if you want your content to be smaller, then you would reduce the system percentage by an opposite amount.

So if you made your page 10% bigger, you would make your system percentage 10% lower.

To me, that's not logical at all.  The size of the music is generally most important as far as being optimized for reading goes. A correlation would be a word processor where the font size stays the same when you change the page size.  The idea is that the text size is already optimized and you want to change the size of the page to fit either more or less text. If you want to change the font size that's an entirely different issue and it makes sense to keep the processes separate.  That's how I see it anyway.  It's also why I find Finale so incredibly difficult to use even after 26 years.  But thank you for the reply.  I'll continue to struggle with it...

Rick,

If you've never used the system percentage tool to get more music on a page, I encourage you to spend a few minutes with it. In the publisher I work for, I have specific templates to work with. But when I get a piece of music that has extra instruments, then I need a way to make the music smaller so more fits on the page. Or if I have a score that's 20 pages long and I need to make it 19 pages, I reduce the system percentage and instantly I have more room on the page to  tighten things up.

Finale is a complicated program and many things are possible with it. They just don't always work the way we would like them to. Good luck.