Finale Forum

Over time, I've created a couple of hundred Text Expression instances in my current work. I've progressed to doing some work with Layer visibility now. And I've discovered that the setting "Expression / Favor Attachment To Active Layer" exists, and that it was accidentally in effect when most of those Text Expression instances were created. Oops.

So the text expressions are now randomly attached to a hodge-podge of Layers. When I display less than all of the Layers, which I need to start doing now for other reasons, a random set of the Text Expression instances disappears.

Is there any way to remove the "Favor Attachment" property from a Text Expression instance? I can't find it...

As always, my thanks to this excellent board for the help.

Jari's JW Change plugin can do it in one click. Do you have that plugin?

Zuill

Errr... I have it now. But I'm having trouble getting it to do anything.

"Document/Show Active Layer Only" is "off". Everything is visible. I do "control-A" (on Windows). Everything is selected.

Within JW Change, the left-hand box I'm assuming is what I want changed. I'm setting it to "Expressions / Layer Assignment".

Then, on the right side of the dialog box:

• "Layer Assignment" is set to "All Layers".
  "Filters" are set to "-".
  "Categories" is set to "Expressive Text".
  "Positioning/Appearance" is "Any".
  "Score List" is either "None" or "Any".

Then I click "Apply". Nothing changes: the Text Expression instances remain attached to particular Layers. (I.e., turning "Show Active Layer Only" continues to cause Text Expression instances to disappear.)

You might want to read up on what is meant by attachment to a layer. Whether the expression is assigned to one layer or all layers, if there are only notes from one layer in a measure, and it is not the active layer, the expression won't show in that measure. If you have layer 2 notes in a measure, and layer one is the active layer, and you still want the expression to show when the option is chosen to show the active layer (layer1), then you need to change that expression to be assigned to layer 1, which is the active layer.

Maybe I am not understanding what you are trying to do, as I don't see the file and what you are seeing.

Zuill

P.S.: Forget all that. See my later post. I must have made some sort of error in my first try. My second try was done post-coffee and yielded correct results.

I think you're mistaken, Zuill. If the expression is set to "show on: all layers", then it will indeed show on all layers with "show active layer only" even if there's no note present in that layer.

I tried the plug-in with a dynamic attached to a note; it worked for me, so I don't know what's wrong. If you can attach your file, someone will be able to figure it out.

Motet,

I was hoping that All layers should show under those conditions. My first experiment failed in that way. Now, retrying it, it works as I had originally expected. Not sure why my first attempt failed. It was a pre-coffee test. Shame on me.

Zuill

So, Garry, are you sure "Expressive text" is the right category?

By the way, is there a setting so that expressions will only attach to notes? I often apply dynamics vertically in the score and if there are empty staves they will get them unless I do in in contiguous batches or delete them afterwards. I don't think I ever want a dynamic in an empty measure, but I guess occasionally I'd want, say, an f on beat three of a whole note.

Here's a sample.

Zuill

Summary: In the end, JW Change did the trick. Took a little work.
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Sorry for the pause, but for the last couple days I didn't have much news to report about the original problem.

First I need to say: yes, indeed, I was more than a bit confused about Finale's "Expressive Text" subcategory of "Expressions". I got confused because most of the other Finale Expressions available are *also* "textual" in nature. I think an "Expressive" Text Expression is an unfortunate choice of category name!

As a result of the confusion, my created textual expressions had landed, over time, in both Expression/Expressive Text and Expression/Miscellaneous. And when last I posted here, I had been barking up the wrong category. So I merged Miscellaneous into Expressive Text, but: still no joy! This time, JW Change's "Apply" button simply refused to light up on the big (merged) category.

So, by random intuition, last night I chopped that really bounteous "Expressive Text" category back up again into new-and-smaller categories, and applied JW Change to each separately. And that did the trick: JWChange's button lit up for each of the smaller ones and I finally fixed my original problem. My text expressions are now visible when they should be visible (on the appropriate Layer), and not visible when they shouldn't be.

Woo-hoo!

My thanks, as always, to you all, and to the Forum. Would not have figured all that out on my own.