Can anyone help me figure out why these measures will not combine into a multi measure rest, and how to fix it?
The red signposts indicate hidden time signatures, but in practice that means any kind of non-default barline, and non-default barlines split multibar rests (as typically they’re some sort of double/final/repeat barline or a time signature). I suspect that selecting and deleting the red signposts won’t achieve anything, but try selecting the barline immediately preceding each of the red signposts and deleting those - you might need to be in the score layout in order to do that.
You are correct that deleting the signposts does nothing. But, deleting the bars lines did the trick. Thanks! But, I have to admit I don’t understand why that worked, because the barlines looked normal enough.
There are a few different ways those barlines could have appeared there. The most obvious ways are:
- The project started as MusicXML and Dorico interpreted the barlines as somehow non-standard.
- You’d previously inputted repeat or double barlines at these locations, but changed your mind. You went on to replace these non-default barlines with the “Normal” barline from the right panel:
(or Shift-B | Enter)
The “Normal” barline looks the same as a default one, but it’s not the same thing - it exists on the page because someone manually added it, not because the previous time signature determines that it ought to exist. The one scenario in which “Normal” barlines should be manually added is if you’re writing in music in open meter, where the (open) time signature doesn’t define any of the barlines.
As a rule of thumb, if you don’t want something on the page in Dorico, select it and hit Delete/Backspace. That goes for repeat barlines, key signatures, time signatures, manually-added clefs, notes, etc.
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