That would seem like a major failing, and I’d strongly urge finding alternative methods; or post-processing the PDFs to embed the fonts.
On a separate note, I’m wondering if @MichaelGood could confirm whether there’s any benefit in converting to a SMuFL document in Finale before exporting as XML?
I totally agree. After 5 happy years in Dorico I’ve had to come back into Finale to find ways to salvage my work there since 2008. I bought a second license for Dorico to get Finale 27 in order to batch save XML files. The possibility of batch saving pdf files came up later. I don’t envisage using them as more than a visual reference when I need to bring the scores into updated Dorico files. The choice of Microsoft Print to pdf seems to be enforced by Finale. Certainly it wasn’t my choice!
This seems to be a problem specific to Finale 27 on Windows. If anyone has better suggestions I’m all ears. I think clarification from @MichaelGood on what happened with Windows pdf export in Finale 27 would be welcome.
I’m in agreement with the recent Scoring Notes podcast, which suggested that PDF files are perhaps the more important file for a lot of work. The vast majority of projects have been completed: and viewing or printing the finished layout is the ultimate goal of that work (barring corrections to minor typos.)
Creating “new editions” of finished jobs in Dorico is perhaps a lower priority than transferring unfinished current work, or starting new projects. Having XML copies of everything is certainly important, of course.
Admittedly, some works do need constant revision, and they will be more of a priority.
And who knows whether Optical Music scanning will improve in the near future; in which case a decent PDF may bring in more data than XML.
My use case is different. I have hundreds of Finale 2008 files which are mostly single-staff vocal lead sheets and some piano arrangements written for students. If and when I want to re-use that material I’ll bring it into Dorico to take advantage of all the appearance improvements I’ve made over the last five years and to use clef and transposition overrides to create versions in different keys, rather than have them in separate files.
The pdf files will mostly be for my reference for resolving uncertainties and omissions in the XML import, so right now I’m just relieved that I found a way to batch export pdfs, however limited, rather than having to export them manually.
No question, batch output of high quality pdf files from Finale is essential for many users.
If your default music font is a custom font that Finale’s MusicXML export doesn’t support, updating to a SMuFL font will indeed help. You’d need to do that for Dorico anyway. Maybe there’s a market for font designers here, converting old custom fonts to SMuFL?
If it’s a Finale built-in font, there’s no advantage to converting to SMuFL as far as MusicXML export goes.
I never worked on Finale’s PDF code so I don’t know what is going on there, especially on Windows. But I would expect there’s another way to script things, or a setting to switch somewhere, that could make font embedding work.
Great! Curious if there’s an additional dialog that needs to be dismissed?
My initial description of the problems was incomplete. Apologies for that.
The window for the graphics export settings also had to be closed manually. So, that and the Save pdf file window need to be dismissed.
I am using Finale 2010 and do not have the File > Export > Translate Folder to *MusicXML function.
Can’t Steinberg or Dorico just provide us a simple software that simply does that?
If you’ve taken up the recent cross-grade deal, then you should get a copy of Finale 27 as part of that.
I understand that if you contact MakeMusic, they may give you a copy of F27, if you’ve already bought Dorico and have a valid Finale licence.
The software that converts Finale files into MusicXML is called “Finale”. 
It would not be simple or easy for Dorico to “just” make software that does that.
I found I have to prepare all my Finale files for xml export/import, every last one of them, to remove things that Dorico was not (or has not yet been) designed to interpret.
On the Dorico side I have built master template sets to match my different instrumentation configurations. I feel the result is in an even tradeoff. The time lost to stripping Finale to its defaults is made up on import into Dorico. For one minute or so they look a mess, but I spend that minute dividing into flows, assigning the stylesheets, and snap crackle and pop! they are nearly production ready, except for a little tweaking.
I have timed a few of these and none takes more than six minutes to reach this point. The key is to first develop your house style and get master page sets preconfigured.
What does batch creation of PDF files do when a PDF already exists? Not write? Overwrite? Is there a way to test for an existing PDF before doing the conversions. I’m assuming that xxx.mus would write out as xxx.pdf.
Does batch processing easily handle really old versions of Finale files? Prior to getting Finale v27 with Dorico I was using Finale 2011. I read old files into the latest version and I’m asked to confirm that I know I’m reading an old file. Does batch processing handle that?
Thank you for the questions.
First of all I should point out that I am in no way an expert on this.
I have only pursued this so far to the point of confirming that I do have a route to get my back catalog of Finale files into both XML and pdf formats (via batch processes which don’t require every file to be handled individually).
I would strongly recommend copying the original Finale files to a completely new folder and setting appropriate destinations for the xml and pdf files so that there is no possibility of existing files being overwritten. (So a direct answer to your first question is that I don’t know, and hope never to find out!)
My Finale files were all created in F2008 and it seems to work ok. I converted the files (as a batch) to F 27 first, then exported those files to xml and pdf.
One caveat, my files are mainly lead sheets and piano arrangements, so I can’t comment on what might happen with a larger score.
Two other points to note:
The xml batch export fails to complete if the number of files is too large. One folder at a time is safer.
The exported pdf files do not contain embedded fonts.
From my limited testing it seems that if I bring the pdf file into pdf printing software (in my case pdfFactory) it can embed the fonts in a new pdf file provided the fonts are on my computer.
Edit: There a a few more provisos about exporting pdfs in my post #19 on 6 sep.
Thanks for the answers. I noted you talk of one batch process to convert files from old Finale formats to Finale v27.
In all my decades of using Finale I didn’t write any scripts. What would a batch convert script look like?
Thanks.
The most I’ve done is modify that one script to batch export the pdf files.
The script for batch conversion to F27 is here:
Menu>Plug-ins>FinaleScript>Batch Process>Convert folder of Files to the current Finale Format
but right now that doesn’t seem to be working.
I’ll need to go back and find out what worked for me before.
OK. You need a file open in Finale. Then, when you run the script, it just goes ahead and converts the files in the same folder. You see what I mean when I say you don’t want these scripts let loose on your original files!
I had a further look at what I did previously.
I think there is a place in Finale where you can set source and destination folders for those batch files before running them.
I’m sorry, but I have too much work on right now to go into this more deeply, but I hope this helps.
I tried it. The conversion to .musx worked! But now a question.
I read up on scripts. I set the source and destination folders (definitely a folder I copied test files to so the originals weren’t damaged). I ran the conversion script (I didn’t need an extra “file open” command). As expected I have both .mus and .musx files in the folder.
And now the question: Now that I have files updated to Finale v27 does the script have a way to operate on only the .musx files and not the .mus files? Or is doing the conversion to .musx separate from writing XML and PDF not necessary?
Yes, I’ve done this for a major US publisher already (with guidance from @benwiggy) and am doing a few more in the next several weeks.
Just a general reminder, Finale tech support is still available so you could try there if you have problems exporting.
Edited: The reason I converted to F27 format first was to be sure that the xml files would be produced from the musx , to give the best chance of an accurate xml export. It may be an unnecessary step.
If you choose a different folder for the F27 musx files they should be separate from the mus files, and you should then be able to run the conversions to xml and pdf with that folder as the source.