Things not staying in place.

[David Ward]

I've been spending more time than I expected (or wanted) on a modest set of parts for just six instruments. The piece lasts 70 mins and is 1317 bars long, but it is for the very modest forces of six instrumentalists plus two principal singers (a mother & daughter in their stage characters) and a two part chorus (male & female voices with no defined Fach) which represents oppressively obstructive bureaucracy, irritating recorded telephone messages asking one to key in this or that, insistently banal slogans and mantras, and a lot more.

Anyway, the most irritating Finale habit for which I've not found a viable solution is that some adjustments I may make in one linked part immediately undo my occasional repositioning of barlines in ALL the linked parts. I have a few cues which use bits of vocal line complete with libretto (lyrics). In the cues I need to adjust the vertical position of the words, but almost as soon as I go into the Lyrics Tool all part barlines seem to revert to where Finale first put them. Why? Is there a way to stop this?

I noticed that the reduced size lyrics for the cues had too large and too high hyphens. I remembered that the solution is to use a fixed size font for the words, but of course as soon as I did that I lost all my adjustments to barline positions in all parts.

I also notice that a mid-measure clef whose position I have nudged reverts to its default position whenever this happens.

Notes I have moved with the Special Tools Note Position Tool stay where I put them, so why not barlines? I have ‘ignore manual positioning’ selected in Document Options.

All this can be dealt with, but it takes time that I might have preferred to use in other ways (even comfortably dozing seems a better use of time at my age [80]).

Any suggestions anybody?

[motet]

That's likely caused by the "Update Automatically" setting below. Finale is too dumb to limit the respacing to just where it's needed. I turn this setting off, but you must remember that if you add music in the score where there's a multimeasure rest in the part, you must redo the multimeasure rest in that part (by right-clicking).

[Peter Thomsen]

… the most irritating Finale habit for which I've not found a viable solution is that some adjustments I may make in one linked part immediately undo my occasional repositioning of barlines in ALL the linked parts … Any suggestions anybody?

My first guess for the culprit would be a document setting regarding multimeasure rests:
Document Options > Multimeasure Rests

De-select the option {Update Automatically}.

What {Update Automatically} does:
When you - in Scroll View - insert notes in an empty measure inside a multimeasure rest, {Update Automatically} will break the multimeasure rest, and at the same time reset the widths of all measures.
{Update Automatically} is relevant in the initial phase when you are inputting music.
{Update Automatically} is no longer relevant in the later phase when you are fine-tuning the layout.

[David Ward]

No, it's not that. I have learnt by experience to have it unselected.

[motet]

I wonder if respacing the lyrics cause the beats to move globally (which would be a bug). Have you turned off Automatic Music Spacing?

[David Ward]

It could be Automatic Music Spacing which is rather irritatingly a programme rather than a document setting. I'll try that if/when I have to do more of this, but I have just managed to export it all as PDFs (again, I had some parts printed for proofing etc, which is why I've been making further changes to deal with all the things I didn't notice on screen). I'm now checking it all once more on screen.

I'll get there! (I hope).