Finale Forum

I would like to add space between the staves of a single system by manually dragging the staves down until I have the desired identical distance between all the staves. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this and would really appreciate any help you can provide.

Finale 25 on Mac

One way is to note the numbers that show up as you drag them up or down.

Also-

Staff Tool - highlight all measures in the system. Go to the Staff Menu and pick Respace Staves. Under "Space Above Each Selected Staff" enter an appropriate amount, usually about 1 inch - hit OK. It might take a little experimentation using larger or smaller amounts as needed, but the staves will be spaced evenly.

N.

Thanks. How do I drag the staves in a system so that they all respace equally. I can drag a staff so that it moves up or down along with the staves below it. But I need to respace all the staves manually so that they all move proportionally and fill the page. Is there a way to do this by dragging manually rather than entering a number in respace staves?

Hi Sam,

If I understand what you want to do correctly, you want to respace things so entire system so it fills the page.

If that's the case, a year ago I wrote a JW Lua script that will resize the system so it fills the page. You can get it here:

https://nickmazuk.com/Resources/JWLua#s ... pageheight

I think it will accomplish what you want to do, but it doesn't do it in the way that you mentioned. Instead of simply adding space between the staves, it simply resizes everything proportionately, including the staves themselves.

If you've never used JW Lua before, here's a link to the website as well as a video that shows how to get started.
http://jwmusic.nu/jwplugins/wiki/doku.php?id=jw_lua
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFGNuGCEIq4

Hope this helps.

If I understand you correctly, double click on the handle to move the staff down. It’ll move all of them the same.

The does all systems no?

If you want to drag one and have all the staves widen at the same time, I don't think that's possible.

Staff tool. Select the handles of all staves except the top one and use the up/down arrows. This will respace staff 2 to last.
In the Layout tool, you can move the whole system up or down to a good position on the page.

Thanks Michel. This is exactly what I was looking for and I really appreciate your reply. I didn't realize that the top staff needed to remain "unselected" for this to work.

This is really helpful. Thanks again!

Hello,

I have tried the suggestion that the Original Poster has accepted as the solution, but, unless I am following the instructions incorrectly, the solution does not work on Finale 26.3.1.520 for Windows.

My question is: did Finale(MakeMusic) remove this functionality from Finale?

In Finale 2012 for Windows, when you highlighted the second staff from the top, and highlighted the rest of the staves all the way to the bottom, and dragged down, this used to evenly space all of the staves. This was a very quick and customizable method.

I will use the other methods, which take longer, but I would like to know (if anyone knows) if there is any possible way to do this the quick way described in this post in Finale, or if the functionality was removed?

Thank you.

I'm not familiar with that feature. I tried it with Finale 2011, and couldn't get it to work. Is this what you're doing?

motet wrote: ↑

Mon May 24, 2021 6:52 pm

I'm not familiar with that feature. I tried it with Finale 2011, and couldn't get it to work. Is this what you're doing?

I realized a mistake in one part of my description in my previous post.

The method I described, was what worked in Finale 25, if I am remembering correctly.

To get the same thing done in Finale 2012, I believe one would have to highlight all staves total, and drag down, and it would equally space all staves evenly to whatever "amount of space" desired.

If you highlight all staves and drag, it just moves the entire system.

I'd be surprised if MakeMusic changed anything along these lines, but it's possible, I guess.

... manually dragging the staves down until I have the desired identical distance between all the staves.

I'm not familiar with that feature. ... (I) couldn't get it to work.

I don't think the methods described above will work either. But, was there a problem using the respace staves option. It is pretty easy to just select a number in the set to box and click OK.