Expression, SmartShape and Articulation Tools all Acting Strange!!

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Angelo Di Loreto Posted February 16, 2020 22:10

Finale 25 - Windows 10
Hi everyone - not sure what kind of bug in the software seems to be causing this, but it's extremely frustrating and any insight is appreciated. For the past few months, at seemingly random times, the Expression, Articulation, and SmartShape tools have all been behaving really strangely. After everything going smoothly for awhile in any given work session, all of a sudden, when assigning any of the aforementioned tools to notes or measures, each one will get "stuck" on a random expression not even CLOSE to the selected one and only apply that!

For example, if I select and insert a SmartShape crescendo hairpin under a measure, it'll apply something like an 8va or a trill instead??!! Or if I want to insert dynamics, it'll instead put a random tempo marking or "accelerando" or "ritardando" at the top of the page.

Sometimes, saving and restarting the program will fix the issue, but sometimes not at all. More often than not, the only solution is to restart the computer! And then everything works fine for about 30 minutes before the problem starts again. Anyone else dealt with this? Please advise on any solutions and thank you very much!

4 comments

Date Votes

J ADRIAN VERKOUTEREN Posted February 16, 2020 22:42

If you have a spare QWERTY keyboard, try swapping it out to see if you are experiencing stuck keys.

Angelo Di Loreto Posted February 16, 2020 22:47

Thanks for the reply - this has been happening on my old and new computer. The new one is a brand-new Microsoft Surface Studio 2, only 3 weeks old.

MIKE ROSEN Posted February 16, 2020 22:54

Restart the computer, and see if that fixes it. At least, until the next time.

It’s what we call the Virtual Stuck Key Syndrome. There has never been a fix, because they cannot duplicate it happening. Restarting seems to be the solution. Adrian’s suggestion is a good one, if there is a key on the keyboard either physically stuck. But electronically seems to be more common, so restarting seems to work.

MIKE HALLORAN Posted February 17, 2020 15:15

Something else can be causing a conflict. Reboot, run Finale only and see if the problem reoccurs. That won’t tell you what is causing the problem, unfortunately.

There is an old app I still use on my Mac. After I run it, a number of other apps do not work correctly till I reboot. Took a long time for me to figure out the culprit but now I know.

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