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I'm a newbie user of Finale 25.  I'm running Finale on a high end iMac, from late 2015.  MacOS X 10.11.6, El Capitan. I'm very experienced with computer music generally, do a lot of programming in Max/MSP and C, synthesizer experience going back to 1970.

I'm feeling a bit frustrated by the user manual for Finale...It seems that the only way to find things is through the search functions.

I can't find a Table of Contents!  Or an index!  And a search for these turns up zero...

I want to read the entire manual, such as it is.  Is there any way to do this? 

I want to know as much about what's "under the hood" as possible.  System architecture, details of not just "how do i do this or that" but also "this is how Finale works, and this is why it's that way.

RELATED QUESTION!

What is the best 3rd party book on Finale, for techies?

 

Thanks!

 

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There is no manual for Finale 2014 or 25. You have online Help files instead. They are slow, sometimes inaccurate and take forever to search as you have to go in and out of sites looking for what you need. It sucks. I am one of many who have been begging for a searchable.pdf User Guide  

 

Fortunately, the 2012 User Guide can be found online, downloaded and searched easily. This is good when the feature is the same as 25—more often than you might think. Printing on the Mac is not the same in 25,  however.

 

if you have a specific request for support, you can submit it through this site.

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Perhaps but Finale 25 has many changes including Rewire support, no scanning... Printing on a Mac is different than previous versions.

 

What Finale needs is a manual, in .pdf, that is searchable and properly indexed. That it doesn't have one is a disgrace. The online help files are not an acceptable substitute. There's nothing like putting in a 3-word search, seeing 147 web links come up, going into each one and not finding what I am looking for. A thousand page .pdf can be searched in seconds.

 

There is a place for online help files: Videos, tutorials, release notes, changes that haven't made it to the User Guide. No substitute for a user guide—ever.

 

About 10–12 years ago, I paid the $20 for a print version of the manual. What a mistake! It was a printout of the pdf file but 4-up per side of 8.5" x 11" paper, over an inch thick. Totally useless waste of paper—even with a magnifier so you could read the pages. I'm sure that no one misses that. I then learned how to search a pdf properly and came to embrace it. 

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My first 2 versions of Finale came with an actual printed manual. Man I loved that thing.

I guess I was super naive when I complained the first time I got a significant upgrade that would have come with a new manual, but it was all "online documentation". The price of progress. "Sell the product, forget about support" the motto of the 21st century.

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Well, thanks for the information folks.  Especially Mike Halloran and J Adrian Verkouteren. It's what I expected but very depressing. I will submit a feature request.  I agree with MH that it is inexcusable that there is not a .pdf form of a real manual, that is comprehensive, and well indexed, and searchable, and up-to-date.  So much for "customer success." I guess there is an opportunity for someone, if they could get tight enough with the programming team somehow, to produce some worthy documentation and make some money. 

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