Unwanted Shifting of Other Parts

Discuss technical issues with keyboards, sound, video cards, etc.

Moderators: Peter Thomsen, miker

daleburket
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 29, 2015 3:06 am
Finale Version: 2014
Operating System: Mac

Post by daleburket » Tue Sep 29, 2015 3:18 am

Finale 2014, Mac. I have been working on an arrangement for full orchestra and have run into a problem. The staves are each set up with independent time signatures; I did this because some of the parts are more easily written in 2/4 and some in 6/8 for portions of the piece. This was probably a bad idea, because when I decided to change the time signature for one of the parts (after clearing all items from that staff), some of the parts written in other staves shifted five or six measures, with parts that started on beat one moved to another beat in the measure. At this point, I only need to change the harp part from 6/8 to 2/4 for about 30 measures. Every time I try, several of the other parts shift and I'm back to square one. Any ideas?


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Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6605
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Tue Sep 29, 2015 5:01 am

Welcome to the forum!

1) It may be possible that your Finale document is corrupted.
In that case you may be able to fix the problem by copying the music to a new, fresh Finale document.

2) However, the culprit could also be a known bug, related to measure number display in Finale’s dialog boxes.
Go to
Preferences - View
In the pane Measure Numbers, click “Display Actual Measure Numbers”.
NB: The setting “Display Actual Measure Numbers” only affects the measure number display in Finale’s dialog boxes.
It does not affect the measure number layout in the score pages.

Since 2) is a simpler fix than 1), you might try 2) first.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

daleburket
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 29, 2015 3:06 am
Finale Version: 2014
Operating System: Mac

Post by daleburket » Wed Sep 30, 2015 2:06 am

Thanks, Peter! Option 2 worked (Option 1 did not). A follow up question if I may: In Studio View on this piece, I noticed that after a single 9/8 measure, followed by 6/8 measures for the rest of the piece, the Tempo Tap shows three dotted quarters in the 6/8 measures, which also slows the piece down in that section. I tried using the time signature tool to change the errant measures in the Tempo Tap line, but this had the same effect of shifting some parts by 5-6 measures (and to different beats of the measure). Any ideas on that one?

User avatar
Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6605
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Wed Sep 30, 2015 5:09 am

I think that we need to see an actual (small) Finale sample document.

You can attach it here - via a workaround:

This forum does not accept attachments with the Finale file name extension.

Before you can attach a Finale document in this forum, you must compress it, e. g. as a .zip file.
And the file size must not be more than max. 100 KB.

To reduce the file size you can …
- delete some measures,
- deletes items from selection dialogs like e. g. Articulation Selection, Expression Selection, &c.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

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