changing pages around in a score

[itamarerez]

Hello,
I created a score but I need to change the order of the pages around.
I do it usually by copying the page and inserting it in the new place, but then I need to edit the whole document since things have shifted, text is displayed on the wrong page etc. In short, a big mess...There must be an easier way to do it on finale!

I am using Finale 2012 on mac.

Thanks for your help with this!

[miker]

Welcome to the forum.

What stage are you at when you need to do this? I'm a little unclear about why you are moving entire pages. Can you give us some more details?

[itamarerez]

Thanks for the reply miker.
I am working on a document with about 25 pages for a music book with exercises.
While finalizing the book I decided that I need to change the order of the pages for it to make more sense.
For example, to put a page 23 as page 9... hope this is clearer?

[miker]

Yes, absolutely! In this case, I would print the document as a PDF. There are any number of programs that will let you rearrange a multipage PDF.

If you're on a Mac, you can do it in Preview. I don't know what's available for Windows, but there must be something!

[itamarerez]

Thanks miker,

The thing is that page numbers in Finale will not properly if I switch it around when I print it as PDF.
Also, there are several other elements (exercise numbers) that are set according to the page order set in Finale, and then they will not be in order if I switch pages around when printing PDF.
Another issue with simply copying a page and pasting it in the new place in the score- is there a way to move ALL elements into the new position? it looks like some elements (text for instance) are staying where they were originally, as well as staves alignments etc which needs to be re-done...

Yes, I do work with Mac.

[Peter Thomsen]

…Another issue with simply copying a page and pasting it in the new place in the score- is there a way to move ALL elements into the new position? it looks like some elements (text for instance) are staying where they were originally, as well as staves alignments etc which needs to be re-done…

Text blocks can be page attached or measure/staff attached.
From your description it sounds like the text blocks are page attached.

The text will move with the music if the text block is measure/staff attached.

Another solution is to add the text with another tool than the Text Tool, e. g. the Expression Tool.

I am not sure I understand, what you mean by your words “staves alignment” which needs to be re-done.
Are you talking about (in “Finale-speak”) staves or systems?
Alignment relative to what? - Page margins perhaps?

[itamarerez]

Thanks Peter.
How do you attach text to measure/staff?
you wrote:

I am not sure I understand, what you mean by your words “staves alignment” which needs to be re-done.
Are you talking about (in “Finale-speak”) staves or systems?

I meant systems (sorry for the wrong term). I guess there is a way to keep system positions attached to a particular page?
Cheers!!

[Peter Thomsen]

…How do you attach text to measure/staff?…

If I understand your question correctly, you are asking specifically about using the Text Tool to create a new measure/staff attached text block, right?


A simple way:
Switch to Scroll View.
When you are in Scroll View, all new text blocks will automatically be created as measure/staff attached
text blocks.

*) Double-click inside the measure/staff.
When you enter the text, you will see that the text is displayed in red.
This is Finale’s way of telling you that the text block is measure/staff attached: The text displays in red (unless you have changed the display colors; for measure assigned text the default display color is red).

When you switch back to Page View, the text block will remain measure/staff attached.
You probably do not want the text to appear in front of the measure/staff, but you can adjust its position
- precisely by selecting the text block handle, and hitting Shift-Return
(which opens the dialog box Frame Attributes)
- or un-precisely by dragging the text block handle.


A more advanced way:
1) Make sure that no text block handles are selected.
2) Text menu > Assign To Measure
When “Assign To Measure” is selected, you can create new measure/staff assigned text blocks in Page View.
Proceed from *) as described above.

Advice:
Remember to switch back to “Assign To Page” when you are done.

…I guess there is a way to keep system positions attached to a particular page?…

You can not “lock” a system to a particular page.
Finale does not have that feature, sorry.

A system’s vertical position is defined relative to the system above it.

I would move a page in this way:

1) Insert a Page Break on the first system (top system) on each page.
This will “lock” the page layout, and prevent disasters.

2) Go the page after the place where the moved page should be inserted.
Select the top system (which has a Page Break icon because you inserted a Page Break).

3) Insert as many new systems as needed for the page you are going to move.
The new systems will be inserted before the selected system.
Because you insert systems (instead of measures), the following systems/pages will retain their
system layout.

4) For each of the new, inserted systems, edit the system margins so that they are the same as the
system margins on the page, you are going to move.
Now you have a page (with empty systems) that has the same layout as the page, you are going to move.
You might want to insert a Page Break on the empty top system, just to be safe.

5) Copy the page’s music into the the empty systems.
Now you have almost moved the page.
You have a perfect copy of the page, inserted into the correct place.
What remains, is to remove the original page from the layout.

6) Go to the original page, and delete its systems.
Because you delete systems (instead of measures), the following systems/pages will retain their
system layout.

[miker]

Or, you could delete the page numbers in Finale, and reapply them to the PDFs.

[itamarerez]

Thank you so much for your detailed response. I learnt a lot from it!

[itamarerez]

ok- I just tried following your suggestions Peter.

How do I change existing text to be measure attached? I can create new text blocks, but simply cutting and pasting old text won't do. Also I noticed that I cannot edit alignment once a text is painted red (measure attached)...

I created the page breaks as you suggested, inserted the new systems and copied the page into it's new position.
Unfortunately the whole document shifted in such a few that I had to undo it...

What am I doing wrong?

[Peter Thomsen]

…How do I change existing text to be measure attached? I can create new text blocks, but simply cutting and pasting old text won't do. Also I noticed that I cannot edit alignment once a text is painted red (measure attached)…

Drag across the text block handle to select it.
While holding down Shift, hit Return to open the dialog box Frame Attributes.

FrameAttributes.jpg (41.48 KiB) Viewed 7251 times

As you can see, you can use the Frame Attributes to
- change existing text to be measure attached,
- edit the text block’s alignment.

…I created the page breaks as you suggested, inserted the new systems and copied the page into it's new position.
Unfortunately the whole document shifted in such a few that I had to undo it…

Please explain.
Are you talking about the same problem (= editing assignment of existing text)?
Or are you talking about another problem?

[itamarerez]

Cheers Peter for your reply! Appreciate it.

itamarerez wrote:
…I created the page breaks as you suggested, inserted the new systems and copied the page into it's new position.
Unfortunately the whole document shifted in such a way that I had to undo it…

I meant here that the staves/systems were all changed after inserting the new page- (from that page onwards to the end of the score). Each page had a different number of systems/measures organized in a specific way, but it was now a mess.

Is there a way to save a page layout (I mean the way the staves/systems/measures are organized) and keep it when inserting new systems into the document without everything shifting?? hope I am being clear...

What I did in the end is I saved another copy of the original document, made the changes (inserting the pages in their new position), and then went page by page and corrected the systems/staves by comparing to the saved document before the change.

[Peter Thomsen]

…I meant here that the staves/systems were all changed after inserting the new page- (from that page onwards to the end of the score). Each page had a different number of systems/measures organized in a specific way, but it was now a mess…

Did you insert a Page Break on the top system on each page? See my Step 1).

Did you insert systems (instead of insert measures)? See my Step 3).

If you did so, then the layout should not become a mess.

Could you perhaps attach a (small) Finale sample document that shows the problem?

Before you can attach a Finale document in this forum, you must compress it, e. g. as a .zip file.
And the file size must not be more than max. 100 KB.

To reduce the file size you can clear the notes.
I only need to see the empty systems.

[PianomanPT]

A simple way:

A more advanced way:

The problem with both this ways is that text and images won't move properly with systems.
I have a LOT of text and images that are NOT attached to any measure and it's a lot of work to attach them individually to insert a new page somewhere in the document with some blank system on it.

It should be as easy as inserting a blank page is. More or less like "Page layout" - "Insert page with x system with y measures per system". Why isn't this possible?

Thanks

[miker]

Send in a feature request. Don’t expect to ever see it.