Actually, you can just double-click anywhere in the bars containing the tie chain (not on a note) to start with the caret there.
The function called Advance Caret moves the caret by whatever’s the active note value on the left panel, so if you set it to whole notes or breves you can move around pretty quickly. By default it’s mapped to the space bar but I have additionally mapped it to Num0 so it’s next to all the note values on the numpad.
I’ve never found that to work for me. I’ve tried clicking above, below, and on the note. I get the increments there, but the carat is at the beginning of the note, not where I clicked. People have told me to try that several times, and I just can never get it to work. (I just tried it again.)
You can advance the caret a bar at the time with cmd-right arrow. Then Shift-D ? to end the hairpin.
Jesper
OK, so the trick is to NOT click on a note in the chain and then move to where you want the hairpin/dynamic to begin. That worked.
FWIW, when I first joined the forum, having just purchased Dorico, I knew I didn’t know that much. I watched a lot of the videos available at the time, and I still couldn’t figure things out. I’m a professional music engraver (for major publishers), and I want things to appear “just so”. I did find many people were very helpful, but there was a lot of “that’s such a rookie error” type answers to many of my questions. I know just about all there is to know about notation in Finale (used since v. 2.6.3), Sibelius (since v. 1.0), and Score, but there is a lot of hocus pocus about using Dorico. I’ve found out a lot by accident and trial-and-error. There are a lot of mystical key combinations that one can’t possibly remember when they don’t use the program all the time. Likewise, there are some features buried very deeply in the menus, and unless you are a high-end engraver, you don’t necessarily need to look for such things.
This forum is a great resource for users, but there are some contributors that don’t understand that people use Dorico at various levels, hence seem condescending. I’ve gotten used to it, but I was really answering Rick that there are some really helpful people here, like those who tried to solve all the examples in my long post above. There are some people here that feel it’s the Dorico way or the highway, ignoring that we all approach Dorico from different directions - not as many as there used to be.
I’ve learned that using Dorico requires a certain amount of devotion to it, and time that I rarely have to devote to it while I’m working on 2-hour operas in Sibelius with tight deadlines.
I can’t remember the specific case that I was trying to solve at the time. I think it might have had to do with when there were dotted quarternotes in the second half of the bar. I complained about it then and went back and forth with Daniel (I think) about it. It is entirely possible, also, that it was solved in v. 6. I was using v. 5 at the time. Whatever setting I tried to use undid what I wanted in another case.
There are other similar issues I find in condensing, too, but I’m not at that point in the current project that I’m working on, and Dorico slows down a lot after I turn condensing on. I have a ton of Sibelius and Score work on right now, so I need to set my Dorico project aside again.
I am curious and hoping to hear from multiple forum participants:
Why are no publishers using Dorico (that we are aware of)?
and
Does the Steinberg/Dorico team actively market to publishers?
There are many discussions about this.
See for example this post:
Thanks for sharing the link. I don’t doubt what Daniel is saying but I have not encountered any publisher that wants native Dorico files - only Sibelius and Finale (still…imagine that). I think it would be good to know which publishers actually accept native Dorico files so that we can support them whenever/however possible.
Strange. I can double click and place the cursor exactly where I want between the tied notes, depending of course, on high finely I have set the rhythmic units in the grid. The only problematic place to click is when I want the dynamic to start directly on the note, in which case, I must follow what I wrote above. Just tried it again to be sure and was successful.
I have asked some pretty dumb questions on this forum and always received a courteous and helpful response. Sorry you have had a different experience.
Not really. Once you have the caret you can move it wherever you need the dynamic to be. You could even invoke the caret at a rhythmic position on another staff and just move it to the staff of interest…
My publishers are actively speaking to Steinberg. I think the main problem is that their composers have Sibelius and don’t want to switch. Those that were using Finale have switched to Sibelius because of its ease of use. Much of what I do is originated by the composers and then I clean it up and extract parts.
One of my publishers still originates for at least one of their composers, and they do it in Score. They have a team of Score users that they have always worked with. I have broached the subject of Dorico with them for these jobs. There is a big one coming up, but I think they have already decided that I would do it in Sibelius. Most of their composers originate their own music using Sibelius.
In my experience the composers want to spend their time composing and not learning new software. Years ago, one of my publishers purchased Finale for all their composers, thinking they could cut out the engravers from the equation. They quickly discovered that their composers engraved really poorly. I remember getting called in to fix some Finale work (by a major composer) and they ended up paying more for my time than they would have by asking me to engrave it in the first place. They gave up on that idea in pretty short order. Now, they are letting their composers choose their software.
An interesting observation I’ve had is that with Dorico getting more widely adopted over the years, I am seeing more and more proof that you can in fact make very bad engravings in it too, just with a different set of errors. 
I work only in Dorico now and accept native Dorico files, but I only get Sibelius and MuseScore… A few times Finale. It’s easy to convert files to Dorico, and the end product looks very professional. I do not ‘push’ Dorico on them; whatever they find easiest to work with. I let them do the ‘factual input’ (not bother with layout), then I’ll make it into high-quality engraving using Dorico.
To make an analogy with text. I’d accept any text format (plain text file, Word, …); it will end up in LaTeX anyhow since there is no comparison to its output quality.
Top tip, @John_Ruggero, but I need a little more help to figure how to improve my workflow further.
The end goal in this example is to add to all three parts a hairpin (< f) that starts on the second beat of the second measure and extends to the accented note in the third measure.
I can click in Vln. I at the appropriate place, but can’t figure how to extend the selection to include the following note. It’s possible I’m mistaken, but I think I usually use Cmd+shift to advance the selection, but this doesn’t seem to work, nor does Cmd+click on the following note - this closes the input caret. So, I end up laboriously changing note values so I can enter the dynamic like so:
The next step is to copy the dynamic to the Vln. II and Vc. but I can’t figure a way to do this in one action. So, I end up clicking to open the input careton each part and then pasting the dynamic.
I’m sure there must be a much more efficient way… but how?
As I said above:
For hairpins, once you’ve moved the caret to where you want the hairpin to start, open the popover with Shift+D and type
>and Enter (or just>without the popover). Then press the space bar to advance the caret by the currently selected rhythmic duration, drawing the hairpin as you go.
You can just select the hairpin and forte and then do Duplicate to Staff Below from the jump bar (or assign it a key command, as many users have done).
Or you can also use Shift+Down arrow once the caret is active, to directly enter the dynamics to several staves:
But in addition, I’d recommend — as @asherber did— assigning shortcuts to “duplicate to staff above/below”, because it’s very useful!
I find the mouse the most efficient way to do things like this and reserve the keyboard for things that I think are most efficient done that way. (I use a desktop computer.) To move the f to the next note, I simply select it and move it where I want.
You no doubt have encountered the puzzle (at least it was to me) that a hairpin doesn’t appear when input on its own (without a letter dynamic included) between notes using the caret. You must input what appears to be nothing and then use the space bar to provide a destination to make it show up!
Not on topic but …
I just wanted to say a late thank you for all you do. Your help is very much appreciated.