When you are in the Chord Tool, look at the left edge of the screen.

At the left edge of the screen is a row of 4 small triangles pointing to the right. They control the baseline for the chord symbols.

Drag the leftmost triangle up or down to set the baseline for the entire piece. As you drag it, the other three triangles move with it.

Drag the second triangle up or down to set the baseline for the selected staff only, all the way through the piece. As you drag this triangle, the two triangles to its right move with it.

Drag the third triangle up or down to set the baseline for this staff, this system only. As you drag this triangle, the rightmost triangle moves with it. Use this third triangle only in Page View (so you can see the system you’re affecting).

Drag the rightmost triangle up or down to set the baseline for the next chord symbol, before it’s entered.

By The Way:

Finale has a similar {4 triangles} feature for Lyrics and for Expressions.

Thanks Peter, I played around with very quickly after I got your reply. Of course now I've got related questions. I know what the "piece" is as it's the entire piece of music. But what is a system? And you say the moving the second  triangle moves the baseline for the selected staff through the entire piece. The third triangle now involves both a staff and a system.  I'm not sure what a system is??

Also, since I've been manually moving symbols one at a time there are many that are in different locations. Is there a way to effectively reset everything to a default 'piece' position? 

… what is a system? …

This is a matter of “Finale-speak”.

You probably already know Finale’s view modes ‘Scroll View’ and ‘Page View’ - right?

When you view a Finale document in Scroll View, you see each staff as a (very) long staff that goes all the way through all the measures of the entire document. If the document has only one staff, then Scroll View will show only one (long) staff. There are no systems in Scroll View. Systems are {Page View Only}.

A system is one line of music on the page. That is: a system includes all the document’s staves for a limited number of measures.

Often there are only four measures in each system.

… Is there a way to effectively reset everything to a default 'piece' position? …

Selection Tool.

Select All (= Ctrl-A).

Utilities menu > Change > Chords…

In the pop up menu, choose ‘Add to Default Position’, and set both Horizontal and Vertical to zero.

Perfect! Thank you, Peter!