Finale Forum

I have come to the end of the 30-day free trial period and need to "register" in order to print out or save. Is registering the same as purchasing? If possible, I'd like to be able to just continue working on the file I'm in the middle of instead of downloading the product again and starting over. (I'm assuming I'll have to pay either way of course.) However, I am not sure how to do this. The registration process asks me for the "serial number." I think I remember this flashing by me at one point when I downloaded and installed my trial version of Finale, but I didn't write it down. Their help says that to find the serial number, I need to go to My Account on the Finale site and look at My Products. However, as far as I know, I don't have an account set up yet. Maybe I do and have forgotten the PWD, but am pretty sure I don't have an account.

More to the point, is there a number to call and a person to talk to who can help me straighten this out? After all I am just about to spend either $350 or $600 on the purchase, one would think that there would be a human available to talk to. Particularly since I want to figure out if I am qualified for the discount.

So, ideas about how to find my serial number to "register" the product and/or the best number to reach someone in sales.

You get the serial number when you pay, I think.

Motet is correct. When you pay, you get the numbers to register the program. If you have a copy of your work saved, you just open it, and keep on going.

If you’ve not done so, you will create a User Account and profile at makemusic.com. It will be created as part of the purchase process however you do so.

You can purchase directly or through a reseller. If through a reseller, you will be emailed a code that you apply in your Make Music User Account to generate your serial number. If you purchase directly, this is all handled in your MM account.

Once you have a User account and serial number, you will be able to download the purchased version that includes the installer for the Garrison instruments and Aria player. You will also be able to manage your Authorizations up to two computers at a time — the Authorization Manager also lets you de-authorize computers you no longer use.

Thanks. I went ahead and bought Finale (with the discount), got the serial number and registered.

Everything appeared to be fine -- I was able to save my changes without any apparent problems. However, today, when I rebooted my system and restarted Finale, it no longer recognized the file I had been working on (and saving) for the past two days. When I attempted to open it, I got a flurry of error messages: "Cannot delete file C:\Users\Melisande\AppData\Local\Temp\FINA9FE.tmp\mimetype The system cannot create the path specified." Then another one like this with a slightly different file name. And another. Then another with "Cannot delete folder ..." And finally, "Cannot create file <My_Filename2>...."

I went ahead and opened an older version of My_Filename and had no problems. I edited this version, saved it as <My_Filename3>, exited Finale, restarted Finale and then opened this new fine -- My_Filename3 without another problem and the test changes were still there.

So, it looks like there was some glitch in the transition from the 30-day free trial Finale to the paid-for Finale which caused a file which was edited under both to become unreadable for some reason. Is this possible? Is it just a coincidence? And, more important still, can I get paid-for Finale to recognize the file and open it, so I don't have to re-do about 3 hours of work?

Thanks!

When Finale runs, it saves tmp files as you are working. When you close Finale, those tmp files should be deleted. Unfortunately, as with other programs as well, Finale leaves some of these behind. Over time, many of these remain in your user Temp folder, as well as tmp files from many other programs.

I have discovered that it is safer to create a unique Temp folder in your user Windows Temp folder for Finale tmp files only. Once you create this unique folder, you then need to set the Finale preferences to find and use this folder. The slot for setting this is the bottom slot in the Folders tab of your Finale preferences.

I regularly navigate to this Temp folder (I have a shortcut to get there easily) to see how many tmp files there are. There are often hundreds of them. With Finale closed (never do this when Finale is open), delete these files. They are useless for any future work, and might confuse Finale, as you've already experienced.

Zuill

Actually, it looks like the opposite. It seems to be trying to delete a file that it cannot find ... and apparently it is not "smart" enough to say, oh well, the file isn't there to delete, I guess I'll skip that step and continue. My idea was to go and delete the temp file myself, but when I looked for it in the operating system directory, I couldn't find that specific temp file either (although there were a lot of other Finale temp files hanging out). I'm not sure how deleting other tmp files is going to help me.

That's okay. It has helped many others. I was just trying to save you grief.

Zuill

Thanks zuill! I do appreciate the suggestion.

I did a key word search through the forum and found a couple of other reports of the same problem. One of the suggestions was to find an automatically generated backup file, a .bak file and then try to open that. I did find an appropriate .bak file and it did open. So, that is a way out of my current fix.

It is worth following Zuill's suggestion of making a temp folder just for Finale and pointing Finale there in the preferences. Finale doesn't play well with other programs sharing the Windows temp folder, so making its own folder will save you some problems.

Melisande wrote:Thanks zuill! I do appreciate the suggestion.

I did a key word search through the forum and found a couple of other reports of the same problem. One of the suggestions was to find an automatically generated backup file, a .bak file and then try to open that. I did find an appropriate .bak file and it did open. So, that is a way out of my current fix.

The bak file is generated when you do your last save. Even better is to create asv files as you work. I have my preferences set to do that every 5 minutes, whether I save or not.

But these backups (bak and asv) are entirely different from tmp files. Those (tmp files) are not user accessible. Since Finale gets confused with these when there is a bloat of them, having a unique folder gives you easy control over them. Delete them as often as you can.

Zuill