Finale Forum

Hi all,

I've got a Finale file (piano piece) which I created in 1998 (not sure what Mac Fin version I made it in, it was probably the latest version at the time), and I now want to make a new edition of the score, simply to bring it up to my current publishing house style.

Would it be wise of me to open the score in Fin 26 and go from there, or would that be inviting problems? Is there a better way? It would take me a while to re-enter the notes from scratch.

Thanks,
Hector.

I would open it in F 26, save it ‘as’ with a modified name (eg add 26 to the name), and then see how it looks. It's highly probable that however much you have to adjust things that this will be less effort that re-entering the music from scratch.

Hector Pascal,

Do you have any older Finale versions (perhaps installed on an older computer)?
Like e. g. Finale 2009.

Some users have reported that they get better results by, first opening the old Finale document in a newer Finale version (and converting the document to that file format), and then opening the newer version document in Finale v26.

Another approach would be to open the file in Finale 26, save as XML, then open that XML. Converting to XML is supposed to strip out obsolete information that may cause problems. If you have an earlier Finale version as Peter suggests, make the XML in that version.

Many thanks for the advice! I have several old Finale versions on my antique Mac, which is lucky. FWIW, I opened a copy of the file in Fin26 just as a preliminary test, and it seems to be behaving well, so I may be ok after all. Everything was in place, except for a couple of text blocks. Apparently, it was a Fin97 file.
Cheers,
Hector.

PS: I noticed when I opened the file that the font of the music is Petrucci 24 plain. I had pretty much forgotten about that font since Maestro font and Engraver font came on the scene. I think I will keep Petrucci because it looks very nice, and very clear for this piano music.

I just went through this same scenario opening some guitar music I had notated in Finale 97. The funny thing is that it opened fine on one computer and opened as a garbled mess on another computer. Both machines are running Finale 25.5. I ended up having to open the file on one machine and saving the file. Then it opened fine on the second machine.

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