Some accents won't respond to dragging or nudging, some will

[mark carlson]

Most of the accents in the attached work just fine, but some of them will not respond to the arrow keys or to dragging by hand—for example, m. 19, flute, and of beat 1. If I use the arrow key to move it closer to the note head, it pops below the staff; if I try to drag it, the same thing happens.

There is one case 2 pages later in the piece, in which the accent is at least a half inch above the note head, and it will not respond to my attempts to lower it. Unfortunately, including that page made the file too big to attach.

Any thoughts about why this is happening and how to get it not to?

Thanks,

Mark

OS 12.6
Finale 27.2

[motet]

I might be applied to the wrong place or to the wrong layer. Select it's handle and press backspace--which will clear manual positioning--and see what happens.

[mark carlson]

I might be applied to the wrong place or to the wrong layer. Select it's handle and press backspace--which will clear manual positioning--and see what happens.

Thank you. I tried that, and it just deleted the accent. I was optimistic that re-entering it would do the trick, but unfortunately, it still won't move to where I want it.

My next step was to switch slur interaction to "ignore", and that worked for that particular accent, but it made a whole bunch of others jump to the stem side of their notes, even though I have it set to always be on the notehead side. They were all perfectly placed until I did that, but even when I reset the slur interaction to "auto", those accents remain on the wrong side. And the problem ones went back to being uncontrollable.

Damn! This is frustrating. It seems that I will have to manually place all of those accents that inexplicably jumped to the wrong side of the note.

[motet]

If you attach your file I'll take a look. I still think it's attached to some note far away.

[mark carlson]

If you attach your file I'll take a look. I still think it's attached to some note far away.

I did attach the file with my first post on this. Is it not accessible?

A clue: if I delete the slur that begins on that note, the accents moves to its appropriate place. But obviously, I need the slur.

I've deleted everything in the score except for the one page it happens on, then. I will attach that, and hopefully you'll be able to access it. The problem accent is in m. 16 of this truncated version.

[motet]

Sorry--I missed the attachment at the beginning of the thread. The accent on the and of beat 1 in the flute looks and behaves normally for me. Some of the accents are a bit too close to the notes, but if I clear their manual positioning with the Backspace key (perhaps it's a different key on the Mac) they all look fine.

But I have Finale 2014.5; I know they screwed around with articulations in later versions adding the "stacking" feature and made something of a mess of things.

Here are your files with the manual positioning cleared.

[Peter Thomsen]

… clear their manual positioning with the Backspace key (perhaps it's a different key on the Mac) …

Indeed it is a different key in Mac Finale.

1) In the Mac version, to clear selected articulations’ manual positioning (and thus reset the positioning to Default Positioning), hit the Clear key (on the NumPad).

2) Or use the context menu.

3) To reset a gazillion articulations to the Default Positioning (like all the articulations in the entire document), use the utility:
Utilities menu > Change > Articulations…

[mark carlson]

… clear their manual positioning with the Backspace key (perhaps it's a different key on the Mac) …

Indeed it is a different key in Mac Finale.

1) In the Mac version, to clear selected articulations’ manual positioning (and thus reset the positioning to Default Positioning), hit the Clear key (on the NumPad).

2) Or use the context menu.

3) To reset a gazillion articulations to the Default Positioning (like all the articulations in the entire document), use the utility:
Utilities menu > Change > Articulations…

Thank you, Peter. I have reset the accent to its default position, using the clear key (and later the context menu), and that places the accent right on top of the note. I figure, great! Now I can move it to where I want it, but when I drag it by hand or use the arrow keys, it only has two positions: right on the note, or too high.

I've deleted the accent and re-entered it, but the new accent has the same problems. I even deleted that entire run of 11 and re-entered them, then added the accent, and it still is stuck in two positions only: right on the note, or too far above the note.

All of the above I did on the single page I attached last night. On the original, complete version of the score, I am unable to even reset the accent to its default position: it's either way too high above the note, or it is below the staff.

Since I sort of got it right on the single page, I copied and pasted that into the complete score, and the accent just popped right up to being too high again.

I am at my wits end. I never imagined it would be impossible to place an accent where it belongs.

Mark

[mmike]

I may be a bit late here, since there have already been a lot of suggestions, however ...
if I right-click on that accent and go to > Edit Articulation Definition and then in the Articulation Designer > choose Manual for Vertical positioning AND uncheck all Postion options below, I can then move the accent in any way (dragging or with the cursor) I want, to any position above, below, left, right, inside the stave even, etc. Of course this is Windows, Fin27, but try that to see if it works for you.

[mark carlson]

I may be a bit late here, since there have already been a lot of suggestions, however ...
if I right-click on that accent and go to > Edit Articulation Definition and then in the Articulation Designer > choose Manual for Vertical positioning AND uncheck all Postion options below, I can then move the accent in any way (dragging or with the cursor) I want, to any position above, below, left, right, inside the stave even, etc. Of course this is Windows, Fin27, but try that to see if it works for you.

OMG It worked! You just saved me from throwing my computer through the window. Thanks a million!

Mark

[mark carlson]

I may be a bit late here, since there have already been a lot of suggestions, however ...
if I right-click on that accent and go to > Edit Articulation Definition and then in the Articulation Designer > choose Manual for Vertical positioning AND uncheck all Postion options below, I can then move the accent in any way (dragging or with the cursor) I want, to any position above, below, left, right, inside the stave even, etc. Of course this is Windows, Fin27, but try that to see if it works for you.

OMG It worked! You just saved me from throwing my computer through the window. Thanks a million!

Mark

It worked, but it also reset every single accent in the piece, so now I will have to manually adjust each one. But that's better than having one accent that simply will not be placed where it belongs.

[motet]

I very rarely have to manually adjust accents, so this surprises me. Defined correctly, they should work in most situations. Finale now moves them out of the way of slurs, too.

[mark carlson]

I very rarely have to manually adjust accents, so this surprises me. Defined correctly, they should work in most situations. Finale now moves them out of the way of slurs, too.

I don't understand why, but those two (and maybe more as I continue editing the piece) accents simply won't budge unless I reset it to "manual". And unfortunately that means I will have to manually reset every accent in the piece. Again, unfortunately, this composer uses more accents than I have ever seen in a piece of music, so it will take a lot of work. I sure wish there were a way to edit the characteristics of a single articulation without having it affect all of the others in the piece.

I also saw earlier this morning that I asked about a similar issue when I started using v. 26 a few years ago, and it was determined by Zuill, I think, that it was a genuine bug, which Make Music acknowledged, but evidently has not yet fixed.

[Peter Thomsen]

… I don't understand why, but those two (and maybe more as I continue editing the piece) accents simply won't budge unless I reset it to "manual". And unfortunately that means I will have to manually reset every accent in the piece …

You have not considered, in the Articulation Selection making a duplicate copy of the accent articulation?

Then you could edit that duplicate copy, and use that edited copy in the two places where you are having problems.

[mark carlson]

… I don't understand why, but those two (and maybe more as I continue editing the piece) accents simply won't budge unless I reset it to "manual". And unfortunately that means I will have to manually reset every accent in the piece …

You have not considered, in the Articulation Selection making a duplicate copy of the accent articulation?

Then you could edit that duplicate copy, and use that edited copy in the two places where you are having problems.

No, I didn't know that was a possibility!

[mark carlson]

… I don't understand why, but those two (and maybe more as I continue editing the piece) accents simply won't budge unless I reset it to "manual". And unfortunately that means I will have to manually reset every accent in the piece …

You have not considered, in the Articulation Selection making a duplicate copy of the accent articulation?

Then you could edit that duplicate copy, and use that edited copy in the two places where you are having problems.

That was easy! Thanks so much for the suggestion!