Joanna,

Welcome to the Community. Can you give us some examples of things you are trying to do and (perhaps) commands you are trying to use to accomplish them?

If we can see specifically what is going awry, we can offer more specific suggestions.

(If you know how to use screenshots, those can sometimes be helpful too.)

Are you on a desktop or laptop? They have different shortcut commands.

… What I am finding, is that the commands given in the tutorials do not work as they are supposed to …

What commands do not work as they are supposed to? - by your word “commands”, do you mean menu items or keyboard shortcuts?

(= are you using the mouse in a menu, or are you using the computer keyboard?)

In what tool?

In addition to the tutorials, make sure you watch the Quickstart videos. Watching how things are done is usually more helpful than reading how to do these things.

I am using a laptop. It’s a MacBook Pro, about 6years old.

One example is, if I try to use, say a 5 to get a quarter note, sometimes it works, but often does not.  Also, it says if you make a mistake you can do lCommand + Z “ and it will undo, but this is not working for me,

CMD-Z is a pretty universal shortcut for UNDO. Does it work for you in other programs? Can you use other CMD shortcuts: CMD-A (select all,) CMD-C (copy) or CMD-V (paste)?

Since you are on a laptop, make sure you are using the Laptop Shortcut set.

Watch the Simple Entry (Laptop) video, here:

https://usermanuals.finalemusic.com/FinaleMac/Content/Finale/Quick_Start_Videos.htm#simple_entry_laptop