Michael,I'm not sure that I completely understand your question, but I will give it a shot anyway.
First of all, you do not really need to know the measure number of a measure to adjust its position on the page. Select the Mass Mover tool, click on a measure and press the down arrow (on the keyboard) to move the measure down a system or the up arrow to move a measure up a system. You may select more than 1 measure to bump up or down by clicking the first measure that you want to move and shift-clicking the last bar. You may also drag enclose several measures. By the way, you should always Update Layout after adding or changing notes/rests before you try to move measures around.
You may also adjust the number of bars per line by using the Mass Mover>Mass Edit>Fit Music command. Again, you can just visually select the bars you want on one line (in Page view) without knowing the number of the measure you are actually selecting.
In either case, how the measures flow from one stave to the next is controlled by the settings in the Update Layout Options dialog box. You may want to go through the online docs to read how the various settings in this option affect the way the music is changed with each update layout. See Update Layout Options dialog box (page 5-9) in the online docs for more info.
If you want to see the measure numbers, click the Measure tool and go to the Measure menu>Measure Numbers to get the dialog box that will allow you to set/edit measure number regions. The measure numbers will show on every staff that has "Measure Numbers" checked in the Items To Display part of the Staff Attributes for Staff... dialog box.
As far as moving staves on the page is concerned, what you described as your previous experience should still work. However, in the Edit Systems dialog box, you have to make sure that you are only changing the margins for the system that you want to adjust. Beginning with F2k, this procedure changed quite a bit from earlier versions. While it may take some getting used to, it really gives you much more power over the placement of systems on the page. It is even better in F2k1. Check out Chapter 34 (Page Layout Tool) in the online docs for more detailed info.
Good luck.
Jim Coull
