Are your lyrics assigned to different verses? Are they properly assigned to their corresponding layers?

As I said, the word "poor" disappears when only layer 2 is active, just as the words attached to the soloist's red notes do when layer 1 is.  The rhyming word "banished" is what finishes out at the start of the system.  Both rhyming words were clicked in in the same session from the same Lyrics source, and attach to red notes.  And yet, moving "poor" down has, as I said, no effect on vanished's extension, only banished's.  This is what it looks like if I adjust the syllable (now, alas! consigned to the gray-edged limbo) down as I would have liked. 

If it were me, I’d put the Poor in verse 1, attached to the Layer one notes. All of the lyrics attached to the (red) layer 2 notes would be in verse 2.

If you like, send me the Finale file, and maybe we can get it straightened out. My email is encoded in my signature.

Thank you, but since this will already print out (when I finish engraving) as I want, things have already straightened out from my perspective.  I really can't see any reason the system should get the vapors just because there are lyrics from two layers in the same m., particularly when there is no overlap.  If in the next 30 years this ever happens again, I would try making the m. of 4 into 3 (with invisible barline) plus an uncounted 1.  It seems preferable to atomizing the libretto into chunks all over the place. 

Victor, I am glad you have found (or crafted) a solution, but just because you do not understand something does not mean it is wrong or without logic in the grand scheme of things.

I do a lot of copy work of barbershop music, where you have two layers in each of two staves, and may have lyrics attached to all of them.

Doing it correctly is a lot easier than fiddling a workaround, but, you're the librettist, not me...

I am not the librettist; I am only the composer.  An opera libretto is undoubtedly the equivalent of a hundred or more song lyrics.  I have already "used up" Verse 1.  It got to a point of congestion that you couldn't scroll down to the last lyrics you pasted in.  (They were there, just not visible.  If you took out some lyrics you already had, they would pop up to the visible surface.  Someone obviously programmed a limit that they thought no-one would ever exceed, and never bothered to document such.  I was already familiar with this matter from my last opera, many years ago.)  So I started the next section with Verse 2, which is what I am in now.  You can see my layers are correct.  Neither respondent has addressed the "illogic" of adjusting a syllable and having it affect not only a different word, but one in a different layer in a far-off measure.

So you have all of your lyrics in a single verse, filling the lyric window? I’m not surprised you’re having problems. We can tell nothing from a picture. That’s why I asked you to send me the document.

There is no illogic in our responses. You seem to have overcomplicated the issue, by the way you have handled the lyrics. But until we can see the doc, there’s no way to be sure.

No.  I have as many lyrics as fit (until the limit is reached) and then start a new verse at a logical point, usually between scenes.  I can't complain that the limit exists, only that it has gone undocumented.  So I am not having problems.  I have had one problem with Lyrics in 30 years, documented in this string.  I think I am doing fine.  Usually users on this site are admired for their ingenuity in coming up with workarounds, but I have somehow invited disparagement instead because I don't work the way others do.  I may not be a model in terms of work flow, and certainly don't encourage anyone else to do things as I do, but my scores still look terrific. 

Victor,

I don’t really care how you do it. I’m simply pointing out that the solution you are asking for is to do it differently from the start. If you would like to discuss it, via phone or zoom, I’m happy to do so. 

I was not looking for a solution.  I had already found one good enough for me, if not others.  I was pointing out an apparent bug.  If you want to say that this bizarre behavior from the program is somehow my fault, you are entitled to your opinion.  Until you or someone can explain in specific terms (e.g., exactly how many lines of lyrics constitute too many for a given verse, apt to generate aberrant results like this) what I did to cause it, I will remain convinced I did nothing wrong, that the fault lies with the all-too-human programmers and documentation.

Well, since that error has rarely been seen, at least on the forum, and reaching that maximum has always been solved by breaking the lyrics into more than one lyric window, I guess you’ve got a better way.

An analogy: you have five one-gallon cans. If you put one quart of water in four of them, and fill the other to the brim, which one is more likely to slosh and spill, if you add a little more?

Maybe send the problem in to tech support, and see if they can give you the maximum. It would probably help if you told them how many characters you have in that verse. Don’t forget to count spaces and returns.

I will consult tech support when I have a problem, which I purport not to have!  I don't see how you could suppose I have a "better way" when I have diffidently noted, several times above, that what I am doing is only for me.  If you go on SoundCloud, for example, everything is "songs."  Finale's Lyrics by its very name shows a similar bias.  Most songs are two or three minutes long, but there is no way to compare even the longest individual song to a two-hour opera.  I am not working with Finale's Verses and Choruses as such.  This will not be a number opera.  By the way, for the record, I started to use the so-called Verse 2 only relatively recently.  There is no way that the amount of text in it right now could be considered excessive, and yet the "problem" I bespeak above is indeed all in two layers of Verse 2.

If you are suggesting that you are the first person to use Finale to write an opera, I seriously doubt that is true. Clearly others have discovered, as you have, ways to make it all work.

I haven't been on this forum in a while and I am discovering that it is beginning to look as snarky and intolerant of diversity as Twitter.  If one says "If you are suggesting..." then one is suggesting you think just what they put in the ellipsis.  Let's be clear about that.  I feel petty protesting, of course I don't think I am the first person to do anything.  Unless there's a Facebook group of Opera Engravers on Finale or the like, though, I am forced to think for myself.  Don't tell me to use Verses and Choruses, etc. in a way totally unsuited to my medium.  I am adapting as best I can, and until yesterday always had good results.  If someone can find in the Finale bible's chapter and... verse, thou shalt not use more than 65 lines of text in a given window without inviting diabolical incursions, then watch me mark off my libretto into appropriate segments and stick to them!  (That is, until the librettist decides such-and-such aria could use another stanza.)  Anyway, I have said all I need to say.  If anyone else wants the last word, they are welcome to it.  But I won't see it; I've had quite enough.  I am barring myself from my own thread.      

PEBCAK.

'Nuff said.

Victor Frost, 

You don't have to bar yourself from your own thread just bar certain users!

Ernest,

In Victor's own words: "I was not looking for a solution.  I had already found one good enough for me, if not others.  I was pointing out an apparent bug."

If that was his original intention, I believe he accomplished that in his first post. Others tried to offer suggestions, which Victor could have taken or ignored. If this thread has degenerated since, Victor could have opted out long ago.

But he never found a bug. He was annoyed that he was unable to use a tool in a way that was contrary to the way it was designed. 

Mike, whether he found an actual bug or not, Victor pointed out what he says he wanted to point out in his original post. You were very kind to try to offer suggestions, but Victor sadly would not let it go.

One can hope that MM staff will see this thread and then take action if they think the issue has merit. When I find a problem I can work around, my personal response is to work around it and get on with my work. If MM (or a plug-in developer) later builds a better solution, I'll use it.

Since the OP is still using 25 and not one of the versions under support (even though he has 26), it would surprise me if MM takes much of an interest. Support will certainly insist that anything he submits be in 26, especially since he owns a copy. He certainly isn’t the first to post a rant without looking for a solution.

My 2¢

"... it would surprise me if MM takes much of an interest."

It will surprise me if MM or the OP takes any interest or even reads this.

You’re right, Ernie. He said he was done, and unlike so many others, actually kept to it.