8va lines

[musicus]

I have noticed that when I email a Finale pdf file to the local quick printing store, sometimes the 8va and the dashed line that follows it does not appear fully in the printed copy. The dashed line doesn't appear. The 8va sign does appear. Can you tell me why this might be happening? Mac 10.6, Finale 2011. Thanks.

[Peter Thomsen]

I suppose that you already have opened the PDF file in Adobe Reader, and examined the dashed line there, right?

And it is my guess that the dashed line is also missing in Adobe Reader, right?

The following method seems to work for me:

From the Print dialog, (in the lower, left corner) in the pop-up menu PDF, do not choose “Save as PDF…”, but rather “Open PDF in Preview”.

From Preview, hit ⌘S.
In the Save dialog, in the pop-up menu Quartz-filter, choose “Create Generic PDFX-3 Document”.

[Harper]

Really? I can't get it to work at all.

I click on the 8va in the SmartShapes menu, then I double-click and drag across the measures that I want played at 8va, and I don't get a dashed line, I don't get an 8va on those measures...I get a red line with movement handles in the middle of them.

Wait. Now I don't. Now I get a slur across the measures that I want to modify, even though the menu has the 8va highlighted.

I have 2011 on a Windows 10 machine. Please tell me how to do this because I think I'm doing what the manual says to do.

Thanks,

[Peter Thomsen]

Harper,

My first guess would be that the culprit is a stuck key on the computer keyboard (electronically stuck or physically stuck).

The smart shapes in the Smart Shape Tool can be accessed quickly via metatools.
If the metatool trigger key is a stuck key, then the Smart Shape Tool will behave as if that key were pressed constantly.

To fix an electronically stuck key, try a computer restart.

To fix a physically stuck key, try pressing the key repeatedly.

[Harper]

Thank you! I had already done a restart for another reason and when I went back to it, it worked!

Much obliged,
~H.