Finale Forum

Hi all,

I make a habit of including the Finale Version in the file name of my documents, for example "TITLE-ISMN-FIN25.musx".

Just wondering if others on the forum have a system of labelling their files...

By including reference to the finale version, I can always be sure to open it in its "native" application version. Another way, I guess, would be to make use of the right click>Get Info>Comments field. I guess you could type the version in there and in so doing keep the file name smaller.

Incidentally, today I opened a Fin2014 document in Fin 25 and it opened without any obvious problems, so perhaps knowing the "native" application version for a document is less important these days?

Cheers,
Hector Pascal.

Why not having a folder with v25 files or 2014.5 files?
Than select all and get info, and choose to open with one of the versions.

Another approach is to start application itself, than use command O to open documents you work on. That is safer way.

On a Macintosh, right click on the file icon and choose "Get Info". The Finale version used is listed under "Content Creator". There's lots of other interesting statistics as well. I'm sure there is a similar command for Windows files (?).

N.

I don't think MM is going to use versions any longer. One reason the new '25' has no version number associated with it. At any rate I am pretty sure they won't do the year thing. It may be more difficult to keep versions seperate but I see no good reason to do so anyway.

I think the info desired is what version of Finale a file was created with, not what version does a program icon point to.

Ronald J Brown wrote:I have always used the most recent version without regard for what version a file was originally created in and never--ever (and I've been using Finale since F2002) encountered any sort of problem whatsoever. I think you are making unnecessary work for yourself.

You are lucky. In my experience the latest Finale will indeed open a file created by any prior version, but often there are problems in the conversion that must be addressed. If you have a piece that you just want to make some small change to, it may not be worth the time to go through and fix everything. It may in fact be risky--if you have a big piece, you may miss some problem and print out a bad copy.

So M. Pascal may or may not be making unnecessary work for himself. I have files in three versions--2005, 2011, and 2014.5. I have relatively few pieces and am able to keep in my head which version created which, but this doesn't seem like much of a problem in general. I wouldn't like the clutter in the file name so probably would take the folder approach Octo suggests. You can also in Windows arrange to have .musx automatically opened by 2014.5 or 25 and .mus by some previous version but of course that only partially addresses the problem.

Hi again, thanks all.

I do like Octo's idea of omitting the version info in my file name, and using folders to distinguish between file versions, however I have a concern that the computer might get confused if I have duplicate file names distinguishable only by virtue of them being in different folders (2014.5 folder & 25 folder, for instance).

I concur that when I "Get Info" on a .musx file, my computer only tells me that it's a Finale Notation File, but not what version of Finale the file was created in. There is some other good info there, it is true to say.

In earlier versions of Finale, you'd all recall that when opening an old file, a message would appear informing us it will save it as an new, untitled file. When this circumstance arose, I would always feel compelled to do a thorough proofread of the new file. If my memory serves me, I have experienced things changing, sometimes tiny things, like lyric extension line length oddities, or hyphen issues, I can't remember exactly, and in recent years I've noticed some strange issues regarding accidentals not appearing (but the playback is correct?!) in keyless scores. I've had to go in and 'p' them a few times to get accidentals to show up. Sometimes it's all fine, but if I can't be certain, I must proofread.

My modus operandi to date has been to proof-read a Finale file as best I can, then turn it into a PDF for use by the thronging masses. Then, down the track, when I think I can improve on the PDF, I bring the Finale file up to the latest version, proofread, then PDF it. With a big back catalogue, this is a rather enormous and unending task that only ever gets more enormous as time goes on. So, as motet says, especially for a little adjustment, I like to open in the original finale version so as to avoid a big proofreading job where possible.

Sorry if my topic is a bit boring! It isn't a very sexy topic of discussion – file naming protocols – but for some reason, I seem to have gotten a bit obsessed by it.

Cheers and all the best,
Hector. (aka Marvin the Paranoid Android).

Don't forget that in the "Get Info" window, down near the bottom, is a "Comments" section where you can type in whatever you like.

N.

Hi N., Yes, I like that idea. I'll give it a try.
Cheers,
HP.

I just did an experiment, and if you rename tune.musx to tune.wxyz, Finale will still open it. So, you could give your files an extension based on the version, e.g. tune1.f25, tune2.f14, etc., and then teach Windows that if you click on a .f25 file, open it in Finale 25, open a .f14 in Finale 2014, etc.

Edit: I was able to get Windows to open .mus05 files in Finale 2005b, though I had to use a Nirsoft utility rather than the Windows "Open with..." method. I recall having to do this as well to get .mus and .musx to coexist (with Finale 2011 and Finale 2014 respectively) as well. I think Finale does something not-quite-Kosher when registering file extensions. Perhaps Charles Lawrence remembers why. The Nirsoft stuff is worth getting at any rate.

I may in fact change my 2005 files to .mus05, so I thank M. Pascal for raising this issue!

Ronald J Brown wrote:I have always used the most recent version without regard for what version a file was originally created in and never--ever (and I've been using Finale since F2002) encountered any sort of problem whatsoever. I think you are making unnecessary work for yourself.

I agree and I've been using Finale longer.

I had to add .mus to files created in the earliest versions so that they would open in OS X but that was it. Even then, I think that Finale '98 was adding it. At some point, I had to change my default font from Sonata to Palatino, then Maestro but the files still opened. I still have my Sonata floppy for all the good it does me.

I have not experienced this level of compatibility with any other notation program I've owned—and I've owned many.

One of the reasons I still keep a working G4 is so that I can use it to translate old Encore files to 4.5.5 in OS 9, then translate them to 5.0.5 in OS 10.4 so that I can move to my iMac and open in 5.0.7. I still prefer Encore for down and dirty sketch up and lead sheets—I can work in it faster than Finale.

My DMCS and Overture v.1 files cannot be opened on my iMac. I can open them in on my G4 in OS 9 only. DMCS stopped working after OS 7 but the files can be opened in Overture 1. Fortunately, I exported any info I needed from those files 20 years ago.

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Windows is different than Mac in many ways where Finale is concerned. On a Mac, you can specify all .musx to open in the version you want but you can't specify that all 2014 files open in 2014, 25 files in 25 etc. You can specify that individual files open in specific versions but there's no way to make the assignment globally—can't be done as the System keys on the suffix.

Any Mac capable of running 25 is incapable of running 2005 and vise versa so that is a futile exercise.

motet wrote:I just did an experiment, and if you rename tune.musx to tune.wxyz, Finale will still open it. So, you could give your files an extension based on the version, e.g. tune1.f25, tune2.f14, etc., and then teach Windows that if you click on a .f25 file, open it in Finale 25, open a .f14 in Finale 2014, etc.

Edit: I was able to get Windows to open .mus05 files in Finale 2005b, though I had to use a Nirsoft utility rather than the Windows "Open with..." method. I recall having to do this as well to get .mus and .musx to coexist (with Finale 2011 and Finale 2014 respectively) as well. I think Finale does something not-quite-Kosher when registering file extensions. Perhaps Charles Lawrence remembers why. The Nirsoft stuff is worth getting at any rate.

I may in fact change my 2005 files to .mus05, so I thank M. Pascal for raising this issue!

I just saw this. As you well know, just changing a file extension from mus(x) to wxyz does not change the data within the file, so a wxyz file can certainly be opened within Finale 2012 and above, since it contains the underlying constructs that Finale 2012 and above can understand. In order for a wxyz file to automatically invoke a particular version of Finale, e.g. F2014.5, wxyz must be "registered" in the OS to do so. Simply changing the extension to an unregistered extension does not cause the OS to register it. Hence the icon shown for wxyz files is just a blank document icon, and double clicking on it outside of Finale will bring up the Windows utility asking for which program you want to use to open it. The Nirsoft FileTypesMan utility can be used to do this, but I found that for unregistered extensions, it is easier to just right click on the wxyz file in a File Explorer window, open the Properties dialog box, and click on the "Change..." button besides the "Opens with..." function. After navigating to F2014.5 and choosing it, the wxyz extension was registered in the OS to open F2014.5. Using right click and choosing "Open With..." should have worked also. It did for me. I don't know why you had trouble with it. There is also an "Open" category in the "Home" tab of the File Explorer ribbon where you can choose with program to open. However, in either case, the icon displayed in the File Explorer did not change even after refreshing the window or closing the File Explorer and reopening it. The icons did change immediately in the file properties dialog box and in FileTypesMan. That is odd. Double clicking did open the file in the chosen program, however. Another oddity. Deleting the wxyz association did not actually remove it from the OS. Double clicking on it still opened the file correctly. There must be a cache of associations that is not being refreshed correctly or timely.

I don't think Finale actually registers the extension. When installing Finale, it calls an OS utility to register all of its associations. I don't recall anything non-Kosher about it. What did you think was non-Kosher?

Charles,

Finale could have very well looked at the file extension and refused to open something with the "wrong" extension, which is why I was pleasantly surprised.

When I tried the Windows right-click, open-with, always-use method for my new .mus05, I specified Finale 2005 but it used 2011 instead! (I have 2005, 2011, and 2014.5). And I recall when 2014.5 came out it stole .mus from 2011 and the Windows method didn't remedy that, either. So Finale has put something in the registry that is confusing Windows, and thus the need for Nirsoft. I thought you were part of that discussion on the old boards, but maybe not.

motet,

All I remember from the old discussion was that F2014(.5) was nice enough to associate both MUS and MUSX with F2014(.5) and that you could use the Nirsoft or something similar to remedy the situation and restore MUS to opening F2012. It may have been that the built-in Windows utility did not work in this situation. I always used the Nirsoft utility. BTW, F25 also hijacks the MUS extension. Seems like that is MM's way of doing it now.

With the advent of MUSX, which is just a ZIP file, apparently Finale doesn't care about the extension or even if one exists, just the contents of the file. That is an interesting discovery you made.

"So Finale has put something in the registry that is confusing Windows,...". Perhaps, but I tend to think not.

Charles Lawrence wrote:With the advent of MUSX, which is just a ZIP file, apparently Finale doesn't care about the extension or even if one exists, just the contents of the file.

It is the case with Finale 2005b, which is where I think I'll use it.