Are you on Windows? And, if I am understanding you, I think you have to be in page view and use the down or up arrow.

As noted in the first sentence of my original post, I am using Windows. As implied in the Title of the post, I am in Page View when I am trying to move the measures - the concept would be meaningless in Scroll View. I only used the latter view to paste the music in (copied from an original which was imported as MusicXML and had retained unwanted page formatting).

Peter,

Try exporting the file as XML, and importing it back into Finale. That often clears up any corruption that may have crept in. If that doesn’t help, would you be willing to send me the file? My email is encoded in my signature.

Thanks!

Now for something totally bizarre: I had been working on my laptop, since I was 'babysitting' at my daughter's house for my (school age) grandchildren. I am now back home, so I loaded the file that had been causing trouble from the USB stick I was working from into my desktop instance of Finale in order to do as you suggested. Before doing so, I tried moving the measures down as before, and everything worked as it should! The two installations are identical - from copies of the same installation file, downloaded a couple of days ago. My wife is currently still at my daughter's with the laptop, but I will retest the issue when I have it back. In any event, there appears to be no problem on my desktop!

Excellent! Chalk it up to JOOTT (Just One Of Those Things)

I never hold down the CTRL key when I use up or down arrows to move measures from one system to another, just the arrow keys.

Neither do I that is why I specifically explained it.

I don't remember having to do so before, either, but that is what the documentation says. From experimentation, the command currently works (on my desktop, at least) whether or not you hold the CTRL key down.

An update: my wife having returned home with the laptop, I tried the operation again on the file to which I had been able to do it without a problem on my desktop, and on another 'random' file. I still can't move measures up or down at all on the laptop.

If it doesn’t work on any docs, the next step is to reset the preference files.

https://usermanuals.finalemusic.com/FinaleWin/Content/Finale/Preferences_dialog_box.htm?Highlight=Preference%20files

You tried it with out the ctrl key?

@Mike: Yes, resetting the preference files (fortunately, I didn't have many non-default options to add back) cured the misbehavior on the laptop. Heaven only knows what actually caused it!

Glad that did it!

Heaven only knows what actually caused it!

It, preferences, is a long time issue. Who knows what causes it but I don't hold out much hope it will be addresses soon.

Just keep it on mind for later on.