Adding Flows overwrites previous additions

[John_McWilliam]

I run Dorico 5.1 under windows 11 and want to add flows to an existing piece of music.

I have chosen to continue on the existing page and expect the new flow to contunue onto the next page but this does not happen and flow4 overwrites flows 2 & 3.

Can you explain - the option to start each flow on a new page works fine.
Nutcracker_Suite_OP71a-Kl1.dorico (1.2 MB)
Nutcracker_Suite_OP71a-Kl1_Flow4.dorico (998.0 KB)

[pianoleo]

Go to View > Signposts and untick Hide Signposts (at the top).

You’ll see that at the start of Flow 2 there is a Frame Break that is set to Wait for next frame break in the properties panel.

If you uncheck Wait for next frame break Dorico will vertically space the music freely (according to the content, the gaps defined at Library > Layout Options > Vertical Spacing etc.).

If you leave Wait for next frame break turned on and add another Frame Break (or replace one of the subsequent System Breaks with a Frame Break), that will push that music onto the next page.

If you leave Wait for next frame break turned on and never add another Frame Break, Dorico is forced to keep cramming music onto the same page.

[John_McWilliam]

Your instructions were followed, however, the properties panel did not have the option to Wait for next frame break (Format/Break type: System break or Frame break) so I just removed the frame break and everything fell into place with one exception - the header for flow2 disappeared.

I found that reinserting a frame break at the begining of Flow2 brought the flow heading back, however, this seemed to force a new page at that point - not what I wanted!
Do you have a quick fix for this?
John

[pianoleo]

Apologies - I should’ve specified that the Wait for next properties are specific to Engrave mode: they won’t appear in the properties panel in Write mode.

@John_McWilliam

I found that reinserting a frame break at the begining of Flow2 brought the flow heading back, however, this seemed to force a new page at that point - not what I wanted!

A Frame Break is precisely the thing that one typically adds to force the material onto a new page. It’s probably not worth going into too much detail here, but the blue rectangle surrounding the music on each page is a Music Frame, and in most scenarios you only have one of those on each page, so Frame Break = new page.

Putting a System Break or no break at all at the start of the second Flow will allow Dorico to continue the music midway down page 2.

The Flow Heading has disappeared because somehow you’ve introduced a page override on page 2, indicated by a red corner in the Pages panel, at the top of the right zone in Engrave mode. (Page overrides are manual adjustments to Frames. Once you’ve introduced one, Dorico assumes that you want to keep your work.)
Right-click on page 2 in the Pages panel and click Remove Page Overrides on the menu that appears.