Converting from a Sibelius File?

[mark carlson]

Success at last! Someone on the Sibelius forum guided me how to do it. It's a ridiculous and arcane process that should not be so difficult, but it did work!

So now I am able to edit these songs (two song cycles, but 14 songs total) in Finale. It looks like a lot of work, but a lot less work than copying from scratch--and a lot less work than learning to use Sibelius.

One question: now, the converted Finale files have a little picture of a paper with a corner folded in the upper left corner of each page. What is it there for? I've never seen it before, to the best of my recollections.

Thanks, Everyone!

Mark

[mark carlson]

I have Sibelius 6. Happy to try.

Thank you so much! As you may have read, I think I have it under control now.

I appreciate your help!

Mark

[Peter Thomsen]

… One question: now, the converted Finale files have a little picture of a paper with a corner folded in the upper left corner of each page. What is it there for? I've never seen it before, to the best of my recollections …

That symbol means a Page Break.
What you see, is a feature that is assigned to the system at the top of the page (i. e. it is not assigned to the page itself).

It is created with the Page Layout Tool.
Look in the Page Layout menu (where you can also find a command to remove a Page Break).

The general idea is that a Page Break forces a system to, always begin a new page.

From your description it sounds like each {top of a page} system has got a Page Break, probably during the file conversion.



By The Way:
Finale has a similar feature that forces a measure to, always begin a new system.
Look in the Measure Attributes.

[mark carlson]

… One question: now, the converted Finale files have a little picture of a paper with a corner folded in the upper left corner of each page. What is it there for? I've never seen it before, to the best of my recollections …

That symbol means a Page Break.
What you see, is a feature that is assigned to the system at the top of the page (i. e. it is not assigned to the page itself).

It is created with the Page Layout Tool.
Look in the Page Layout menu (where you can also find a command to remove a Page Break).

The general idea is that a Page Break forces a system to, always begin a new page.

From your description it sounds like each {top of a page} system has got a Page Break, probably during the file conversion.



By The Way:
Finale has a similar feature that forces a measure to, always begin a new system.
Look in the Measure Attributes.

Thank you, Peter!

[musicxml]

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. But for those having a similar problem in the future:

In order to install the Dolet for Sibelius plug-in on Mac, you need to have the plug-in folders for a local version of your plug-in present. If you don't have that, you need to create them. Perhaps an easier way to do this than following the plug-in installation instructions is to edit a copy of a plug-in. Here are steps for the current Sibelius 2020.6:

1. Open a new document - a blank one is fine.
2. From the File menu, choose Plug-ins, then Edit Plug-ins.
3. The Edit Plugins window will open with the first plug-in selected. Click on Edit...
4. Click Yes to confirm that you want a copy of the plug-in.
5. Click on the Initialize method if not already selected and click Edit
6. Type a space and then delete it to fake the editor into thinking you changed something, then click OK.
7. Click OK to get out of the plug-in specific dialog.
8. Click Close to get out of the Edit Plugins dialog.
9. Quit Sibelius and try installing again - this time it should work.

This is a limitation of the drag-and-drop installer on Mac. It is not an issue on Windows. Since Sibelius now ships with native MusicXML export, there hasn't been much work on the Dolet for Sibelius plug-in over the past few years.

[mark carlson]

Thanks! I eventually figured it out, but it wasn't easy. Sibelius makes things awfully difficult sometimes.