Adjusted measure width won't stick

[Capricorn]

I want to adjust a measure to be longer than normal to accommodate instructions in the score so I go to measure attributes and click the width change and make my change and save, but when I use music spacing, it snaps back to the original width. Is there some way I can make it stay wider? I have Finale 25S on High Sierra.

[miker]

Document Options > Music Spacing

[Peter Thomsen]

… when I use music spacing, it snaps back to the original width …

Finale is doing what it is supposed to do.
To avoid that music spacing changes the measure width, do not select that particular measure before you apply music spacing.

By the Way:
Are you sure that Music Spacing is the culprit?

The culprit could also be this option:
Document Options - Multimeasure Rests > Update Automatically

Unfortunately “Update Automatically” resets the width of all measures, not just multimeasure rests.

While “Update Automatically” is convenient during music entry, you should probably de-select “Update Automatically” when you have entered the music, and begin working on the layout.

[Capricorn]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I tried everything but the measure keeps popping back to the original position when I do spacing. I think I'll just have to keep track of the measures I wanted to be extra wide for instructions and if I want to fix spacing on the rest of the file, I'll highlight the measures before and space, skip the measure with the change, and then highlight and space afterwards. That works!

[David Ward]

I don't know whether or not this will help in your case, but earlier today I had this problem with an otherwise empty bar to which I'd added a line of spoken dialogue using the text tool (rather than the lyrics tool). In the measure attributes dialogue I then added extra space (quite a lot!) at both the beginning and end of the bar. It now retains its extra width when music spacing is applied.

[N Grossingink]

If you want to widen a measure and make the width untouchable by music spacing, enter some notes in layer 4 and apply the Staff Style "Blank Notation—Layer 4". That will hide the notes. Make sure in Layer 4 layer options "music spacing" is checked and "playback" is unchecked. If you need layer 4 to play back, mute these dummy notes with the MIDI Tool. The smaller note values you use, the more notes and the wider the measure. You can mix and match note values to get the width you want.

I'll attach the file so you can see how it's constructed.

N.

Screen Shot 2018-11-29 at 4.25.06 PM.png (211.29 KiB) Viewed 3642 times

[Capricorn]

I tried both of the last two methods: adding space to the beginning and the end of the bar and putting rests in layer 4 and then applying the staff style "blank notation layer 4" and they both worked! I wonder why adding space to the beginning and end of the bar held while changing the width did not hold. In any case, this is something else to add to my Finale file. Thanks for all the suggestions!