Joining two Finale files

[michael graubart]

I use Finale 2004b on a Mac G4 (PPC), OS X 10.4.11.

My string quartet is in 3 movements. For reasons to do with when I wrote the three movements, the first two movements are in one Finale file and the third (I almost wrote 'the finale') is in a separate Finale file. I should say that the music is very complex, the spacing and layout difficult and there are very many hairpins and other interpretative signs. I want to join the two files up into a single file for the whole quartet.

I have tried adding the right number of measures to the end of the first file and then copying and pasting the contents of the second file into the empty measures. But the result is a mess: all my careful and often manually-adjusted spacing is destroyed (even when I adjust the number of measures on each page to be the same as in the original second file), dynamic marks are missing, various marks have become displaced. It would take almost as long to put all this right as to create a new score. Can anybody please suggest a way that I could join the two files together without changing the layout and details of the second?

[michelp]

In Finale 2004, what you did seems the right way, but shows its limitations. In recent versions, to combine files, a "Merge" function was added, about which some users here may have something to say.
Now, if your work does not have necessarily to circulate as a Finale file, you could create a pdf file of each part, and use a pdf software (Adobe Pro or some cheaper alternative) to merge all the pdfs into one file. This way, the layout will be preserved.

[michael graubart]

That's brilliant, Michel — thank you very much. It is precisely in pdf format that I have to have my final score, so your solution is exactly the right one for my situation. I did not realize that there was software that would join pdf files. Thank you again, also for being so quick off the mark.

[michelp]

Michael,

I see that you use MacOsX. In the latest versions of MacOsX (not sure in 10.4), you can open 2 pdfs with Preview, side by side. In both documents, click on the button on the top right (sidebar, I think). You can then drag & drop the page vignettes from one sidebar to the other and reorder them if needed.
If that doesn't work on 10.4, there are some free/cheap pdf softwares available (example : http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/morei ... x/10910113)

[michael graubart]

The Preview way of joining pdf files doesn't seem to work on OS X 10.4, Michel; at least I haven't succeeded in making it work. There is a tool-bar button called 'Move', but I cannot make out what it does.

But I downloaded AddPDF from the VersionTracker page you gave in your kind reply, and that does the trick perfectly. It even converts Finale to pdf while combining them.

I had also by then discovered another application, called CombinePDFs, which also does it perfectly. So I have now joined my scores and all is well.

Thank you very much

[DrPangloss]

I want to just tag onto this.

I'm using Finale 2010. I'm writing a musical and there is a lot of music. For our first workshop I created a score by merging the songs together into one file. We're taking a look at re-writes, and one thing we know for certain is that some songs will be in a different order than they were before.

Merging the score into one file made for a number of tedious formatting errors which I had to manually fix all the way through. Will I be able to move songs around within the file, or will I have to change the order in the separate files and then re-merge, thereby having to do all that grunt work again?

Also, does anyone know if the score merger is more sophisticated in the new version, or if there are plans to add functions to it that can move songs around, create a table of contents with correct pagination, etc?

[michael graubart]

Reverting to the procedure of converting Finale files into pfd files and then joining them, CombinePDFs.app allows you to load a multi-page pdf into it, re-order the pages and create a new multi-page file with the pages in the new order.

I have also discovered another (free) application, PDFLab.app, which also does this and a lot of other things as well. It has its quirks: if you store the application more than one level below the desktop, it won't work. And it throws up an error message when making the re-ordered multi-page file — which doesn't mean anything, because it does the job perfectly well. (I use a Mac G4 with OS X 10.4.11; it may behave differently in other systems.)

Google will find sources for these applications.

[DrPangloss]

The biggest reason I'd rather use the score merger function is for pagination. It's pesky to have to change all the pagination every time we do re-writes, but we need accurate scores for each workshop.

Is there a way to re-arrange individual songs within a score once they've been merged and/or are there plans to make such a function?