Correcting articulation positions

[daveclilverd]

Hello,
Please forgive me if I've missed the solution to this elsewhere on the forum - but I have searched before posting! I am using Finale 2014.5 on Windows 10.

My workflow often involves scanning music using SmartScore 2 Pro and then importing the result into Finale. This works great but one of the problems I experience regularly (and haven't been able to solve easily) is that almost always, some of the articulations appear in Finale on the opposite end of the note to the correct (default) one. i.e. some staccato dots appear at the stem end of the note rather than the head - while others (the majority) are just fine.

I've tried a number of things - like selecting the articulations and using the Backspace key to remove any manual adjustments. Even if I delete the articulation and re-add it in Finale (using the appropriate metatool) it still appears at the wrong end of the note. I can drag the articulation to the correct end - but that's very time-consuming and not very accurate. If I delete the note with the troublesome articulation and then re-add it everything is fine. So it looks like it may be related to some property of the note itself?

Anyone got any ideas as to what might be causing this problem? Is there a way to reset the articulations 'in bulk' to their correct, default position?

Many thanks for any help.
Dave.

[Vaughan]

Try selecting Utilities/Stem Direction/Use Default Direction and then removing the manual adjustments to the articulations. Perhaps the stem direction got frozen in, for Finale, a non-default setting during the xml translation, causing the stem-side placement. Otherwise, try double-clicking one of the misplaced staccatos and note what its settings are. You can either change these or, if there's another staccato articulation with the correct settings, delete the one which places incorrectly and replace it with the standard one.

[daveclilverd]

Thanks very much for your reply. It looks like a combination of your steps does indeed solve the problem. Sometimes the default stem direction isn't what you want (e.g. in a passage with slurred quavers where it looks neater to swap some of the stem directions so that the slurs lay neatly) and it does look as though the cases where the staccato dots are on the stem side that the stem direction probably isn't what Finale would consider to be the default.

I must admit that it had never occured to me to double-click the articulation to check its settings - what a fool...!!! A lot of the staccato articulations are set to 'Auto note/Stem side' - which isn't what I would have expected for a staccato articulation.

I just need to work out how to apply these steps 'in bulk' (rather than doing it one articulation at a time) and then I'm sure I will be much happier...!!

Thanks again for your help.
Dave.

[Michel R E]

A lot of the staccato articulations are set to 'Auto note/Stem side' - which isn't what I would have expected for a staccato articulation.
Dave.

this is the default setting, and the one that generally gives correct placement of articulations.
it places articulations on the note side when only 1 layer is used, and when two layers are used it places articulations on the stem side, which is the correct usage for that situation.