Have you tried dragging the musx file from your NAS to your local computer and then (from within Finale) opening the file on your local machine? You can always save the file back to your local drive and then drag it onto the NAS for long-term storage.

Yes, I did. All variations of moving and copying I could think off. Same result ...

Have you sent a couple of those files to Tech Support, to see if they could figure out what might have been changed?

Since Finale files can be saved and opened on so many other devices, I would be inclined to think that something in the NAS file system changed your Finale files in some way.

Mac or Windows? It makes a difference.

>Now, IMHO, this MUST be a bug in Finale because<

Don't be so sure.

I'm on Windows 10, BTW. Sending some files to tech support may not be a bad idea! The only special thing about this NAS is that it does SMB v1. But, like I said, Finale is the only app that seems to have troubles with this thing ....

>But, like I said, Finale is the only app that seems to have troubles with this thing ....<

Let me tell you a little bit about my background. I came marching in here out of the blue, sorry about that.

So, I'm Henk. In a distant past I studied music and software engineering. I make a living out of software engineering. I prefer to think that I write music for a living, but in reality it buys me an occasional lunch.

Anyway, as a software architect, I designed stuff like operating systems (if you run on Windows there's still a little bit of code deep down in the communication stack that has my signature on it), device drivers and, yes, storage systems. This is why this problem stupefies me, I can only explain this behavior when an app would be using low level storage api's, or something similar. So, I'm not accusing Finale, I'm just asking whether there's is something special to Finales' implementation that could explain this. All software products contain bugs. I don't care. I just want to know how to work around this (while still using my NAS, preferably) and whether there's a way to recover my corrupt files.

I already answered your question earlier in this thread, but most XML based file formats will use some form of compression to handle the size increase of going from a binary to a text based format. While it is technically possible to use native XML binary encoding (it's a standard but it's rarely used) most vendors (MakeMusic included) opt for external compression. This means that you can take a file like that and open it in an archive manager, like 7zip.

I already explored all variations I can think off in copying/moving stuff to and from my NAS. The only pattern I can see is that this started in Finale 26. I've used Finale since the late nineties, but this behavior is totally strange to me.

Anyway, there's no need to get angry. The impression I have right now is that it was maybe a bad idea to reach out for help. I am not a child. I know what I'm talking about and I usually try things before I speak. But I'm still human and I might miss something obvious.

Many thanks,

Henk de Koning

And Mike H. is one of the very few here who knows what NAS and SMB v1 and 7zip and low level apis are.

Most of us are not software engineers, which is why you should take this kind of problem to tech support, instead of snowing us with jargon that might as well be ancient Sumerian.

Not getting mad; just pointing out that you may be looking for help in all the wrong places...

>Anyway, there's no need to get angry.<

No one's angry.

> already answered your question earlier in this thread, <

If you had, I wouldn't have asked but I'll give you the answer based on your response: It appears to have nothing to do with the problem.

>I already explored all variations I can think off in copying/moving stuff to and from my NAS<

But you didn't do what I asked: Zip a file, move it to the NAS. Copy it back and Unzip. Is it changed? Please do that and answer my question.

>I might miss something obvious.<

That you are way overthinking this has occurred to me. But I can't tell without seeing what I need to know.

I did try beforehand. Zipping and unzipping. That's what I meant with try all variations. It doesn't change. Neither does a Word, Excel or Sibelius document. I can write them directly from the corresponding app (7zip, Word, Excel, you get the idea) and read them back no problem. I can write to a local disk and then move, or copy, to the NAS and open it from there in anything but Finale. I can take the copy, or moved file, and copy, or move, it back to local. Still works.

This really only happens with Finale.

I will take one of the corrupted files and send it to tech support. The whole idea of checking here was that I hoped someone ran into this before ...

A simple google search gives lots of results on NAS and file corruption. It seems more like an NAS issue.

Do you not have backup files? Or at the very least, the .bakx files in the Documents > Finale Files > Backups folder?

Have you tried using a different app than 7zip? Is your copy up to date? The reason I ask is that archiver apps are never trouble-free over time. Things do change so updates must be checked and run.

For a long time, the one built into the MacOS had issues unzipping license files from Eventide, PSP and a few other companies. Eventide Support knew about this and told me to use keka.app — which worked perfectly. Then a few months ago, the latest build of Keka was resulting in corrupted files. I had to delete it from my system to make anything else work — but that was ok because the built in unarchiver for the MacOS is now working properly.

Since there's no native Windows archival tool, I would try WinZip since that has always had the reputation of being the best commercial tool for this purpose. It's free during the trial period.