I do not think Alphanotes can display fingerings. (Consider: at a certain level of play, fingerings can be different on different instances of the same pitch.)

If I were doing something like this, I would create a new category of expressions (not possible in F2009, I know) and use the category definition to set default separations between the staff, notehead, and fingering number).* If I needed fingers below and above the notes, I would create separate categories for each. I expect it would take a bit of experimentation to determine the proper offsets for each set of fingerings--and then some manual adjustment would be needed.

* I am guessing you are trying for piano/keyboard fingerings. If you are doing fingerings/diagrams for wind instruments or the like, then all bets are off.

Lisa Hirschmugl,

If I understand you correctly, you are trying to position the finger number, neither above nor below the notehead, neither before nor after the notehead, but rather in front of the notehead, right?

Finger numbers that could fit inside a “normal sized” notehead would have to be quite small.

I  suppose that you are creating “big size” notation (perhaps for beginners), right?

I am not sure that there is a good solution.

You could try creating the finger number in the Shape Designer, and add an opaque rectangle behind the number.

Then this shape could be used as a shape articulation:

In the Articulation Designer you can create a {font character} articulation, but you can also create a {shape} articulation.

Another option is the Expression Tool.

You can also create the finger number as an expression (font character expression or shape expression).

Thank you both - I will try messing with the expression option and the shape option - actually I am attempting to put violin finger numbers on colored noteheads at about 200% enlargement - so I already to fuss with making some notes wrong accidentals in order to get each string to be a different color - for instance A on the A string is blue - A on the E string is red (so I put it in as Ab) and A on the G string is black (so it is entered as G#) and then I hide the accidentals - I was hoping if the numbers were offered as alphaphonts that would allow me to assign any number to any note even when the note uses a different number by assigning it manually..........

Thanks for any thoughts re: above - Lisa H

The other question I really have is why on the quarter notes the number made by the articulation box does appear in front of the note head while on the eighth notes it hides behind 

After having fooled with the expression tool I see that the limitation is that the opaque border around the number hides the colored notehead so that I cannot color the notes as all the expressions are black and white - that is why I am trying to see if I can get the articulation option to work.

No, when you mentioned adding fingerings to notes, I did not understand that you needed them superimposed on the noteheads. What age are these students? I never had any problems putting recorder fingerings above the notes as expressions--well, actually back then I was handwriting both the fingerings and the notes.

These students are as young as four and as old as middle school.

The reason I would like to put the number in the notehead is so that the student studies the placement of the note on the staff and is not trying to look both above and at the note in order to get that information.  I have been handwriting the numbers in for the past 5 years and it is leading to students being able to transition to traditional notation very easily - but especially for students with visual impairments (dyslexia, etc.) the handwritten items swim around the page and having the information computer generated would help that.  The other reason the articulation tool is preferable to the expression tool is that the number in attached to the notehead and moves around when I use page lay-out tools.

Lisa Hirschmugl,

If I understand you correctly, you are writing for violin students, right?

And the coloring tells, on what string to play the note, right?

This is not a layout that is easy to create with Finale (as you have found out).

Here is a different idea:

Create the layout as a (standard) Black-and-White layout in Finale, and export as PDF.

Open and edit the PDF file in a vector based drawing program like e. g. Illustrator where you can color all items freely - and insert finger numbers freely.

Thank you again I will try exporting as a PDF