… The score has a nice last page that looks like the rest if I assign 5 bars per system. But I only want 3 per system, and when I do this, my last page of the score has only one system, and all the rest have 5. How can I get the last page to look more like the previous …

Let me get this straight:

1) With 5 measures per system the last page has 5 systems - just like the previous pages, right?

That must be 25 measures, right?

2) With 3 measures per system you get a page with 5 systems (= 15 measures), and an additional page with 1 system (= 10 measures), right?

It is not clear to me what you mean by your words - look more like the previous - :

- 3 measures per system?

- 5 systems on the page?

Also, it is not clear to me, what solutions you do not want, like e. g.

- more than 5 systems on the page?

- more than 3 measures per system?

- adding extra measures to the document?

Please explain.

Either the second last page has to have 4 bars on some of the systems or one more system. If 5 bars looks OK, why not 4? That's the way the professionals approach it.

In short, this is a layout issue. Step one: How is it supposed to look i. e . # of staves per page and # of bars per page? Step two: When you know the answer, the rest is easy ... unless a complex measure throws everything off, then you must tweak and adjust till it looks right on all pages.

>That's the way the professionals approach it.<

Exactly!

Thank you Peter, Bruce & Mike for taking the time to weigh in. I've figured out my problem. I mistakenly thought the "Fit Measures" option was for the entire document only. When I posted, I didn't know you can select text and apply "Fit Measures." So now all pages are evened out and the layout looks great. There's just a few measures that have 4 bars instead of 3 bars in a system.

Thanks again!

- Mark