As I understand it, you can create your own “style” to be applied to new documents. But if you pretty much stay with the same ensembles, then I agree; a few templates should be all you need.

"your own “style” to be applied to new documents"

… much like creating a template and applying that in a new document… same thing no ? Wouldn't it be more useful to have styles that can be applied to existing documents ?

Styles are likely more useful setting up new documents than re-configuring imported or existing documents.

Opening a file in Finale 27 in Engraved style can be vastly different from opening it in Legacy Engraves style if you do not want to use SMuFL fonts, for example.

Yes but can't you do the same with a template, correctly set up ? So far, I'm still not convinced that styles are not just a different way of applying a template, which is really not very useful ! It would be much more helpful to be able to apply styles to an existing document !  OK. With SMuFL fonts you can change fonts for another SMoFL font, but that's really no big deal.

To be able to change the whole look of a document by applying a different style to it, that would be a big deal, for me anyway. It would save literally hours of work !

Styles are just templates, nothing more. Perhaps it's a poor choice of words if it implies something else.

You say that you'd like to change the whole look of a document. You do that by importing libraries into your file. If you have many items which take hours to do, then you should make yourself a template with you preferred settings in it.

Thanks for your reply. If you are going from a MIDI file or a music XML, EVERYTHING needs doing pretty much, but the template solution doesn't work as the music is already imported. I've tried, in the case of music XMLs, to copy/paste the music XML content into a template, but it doesn't work. Most of what you gain in a music XML over a MIDI file is lost in the process, so you still have to start over from scratch.

Word is that Sibelius handles applying styles much more elegantly and more closely to what the notion of styles is about. Perhaps I should be looking that way rather as I have a LOT of old files to deal with ! The old files can only be recovered in MIDI and PDF, PDF allowing to get to music XML through other software. 

I import the XML in whatever format it comes, and then paste it into my preferred template, be it Barbershop, choral, or whatever.

MIKE ROSEN

Don't you lose all the music XML additions ? So far, copy/pasting music XML into a template is the same as doing it with a MIDI file. I get just the notes. Sometimes, I ONLY have a MIDI file to work with which is why a proper implementation of styles would be so useful. As it is, I stand by my original hypothesis, that styles in Finale are useless !

Fred,

I'm not sure what you're doing wrong but I have a different experience from you. I engrave for publishers. They supply me with their Finale template which contains their house style. I get Sibelius files from them all the time. I import those into Finale via XML, then I copy and paste that file into the template. All of the template settings and house style are retained.

Jeffrey, that sound much better than what I'm getting ! Perhaps my XMLs aren't up to scratch ! Your comment encourages me to insist a bit. I'll keep trying. This could certainly help if I can get it to work for me…

Thanks.