Page offsets, even & odd

[David Ward]

I found myself getting into a bit of a muddle (maybe it's just my being nearly 82) when reorganizing a large score in twelve Finale files. I had originally had each scene start on a right-hand page, whether or not the preceding scene had ended on a left-hand page. This meant there were around half a dozen blank pages which I had added at the end of various scenes, all with the appropriate offset for the page numbering of the whole.

Anyway, I decided to remove all except one of the blank pages, the surviving blank being for the scene which would begin immediately after the interval (in case the conductor's score were to be printed in two volumes if preferred). What got me into a muddle was my late realization that Finale, even after page offset adjustment, always placed the first page number of each file on the right side of the page even when the page number, after offset, was an even number (eg 192), indicating that it was to be a left-hand page.

I hand to add a blank page to the start of each Finale file which began on a left-hand page, and then save to PDF omitting the opening blank of each such file.

Question: was my eventual solution the simplest way of dealing with Finale's failure to recognize the left or right hand nature (ie even or odd) of page numbers?

Alternative methods might have been to reverse the the right and left hand settings for number positions in those files which exhibited the problem, or to hide Finale's page numbers and then add them to the PDF later.

Or is there a simple setting which I have overlooked?

[motet]

I do what you do, adding a blank page and then printing 2-end to PDF. With linked parts, it would be tedious changing the page offset for each part, so I add page numbers in a PDF program after the pieces have been combined.

Since I'm not using Finale's page numbers, I really don't need the blank page, I guess, except I rely one Finale's "book style" page view when worrying about page turns.

If you don't have linked parts and aren't worried about page turns, though, just swapping the two "Horizontal" settings in the page number Frame Attributes should work. I've done that in the past.

[motet]

What you expressed would be a good feature, I think--determining what was a left or right page according the the page number being rendered rather than the position in the file. There also needs to be separate page offsets for each part.