i want to turn off condensing for certain movements of an oratorio that i’m writing. in the a capella chorale movements, the choir is uncondensed, but in the movements that includes the full orchestra, chorus and soli, i want to turn on condensing again. is that possible on dorico?
Condensing is a per-layout setting. If you want to accomplish this in one project file, you could create separate layouts for the different movements and turn condensing on or off as appropriate. Then you could adjust the starting page number of each layout, export them all to PDFs, and assemble the separate PDFs into one file (using a PDF utility).
So it’s possible to achieve this, but it’s not straightforward.
Edit: Of course, @charles_piano is right that you can change condensing options within a given layout.
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thank you so much @asherber ! but what do you mean by “layouts” excatly? i couldn’t quite understand. (i’m a bit new to dorico, sorry 
)
A layout is a part or score.
If you’re new to Dorico, it’s helpful to read through the Dorico Concepts section of the manual.
Here’s the section on layouts:
i could not quite say it right, sorry. i just realized i know how layouts work how can i access the different layouts of different movements?
thank you soooo much, @charles_piano !
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A layout includes the music for one or more flows, and one or more players within those flows.
In Setup mode, if you click a player, flow, or layout so that it turns bright blue, you can see the other entities that are wired up to it. Here, for example, I’ve selected the full score layout, and I can see that it contains all of the flows (at least, all of the ones which are visible in the bottom panel) and all of the players.
But I could specify that this layout only has music for one flow, by unticking the others.
Then I could create a second full score layout that only contains the second flow, etc.
But @charles_piano has the right answer! I was thinking just of the condensing toggle in Layout Options and overlooked the far better plan of changing condensing options within a layout.
(It’s funny how the wording of a question influences our thinking. The OP asked about turning condensing on or off for different movements. So my brain went right away to the act of turning it on or off rather than turning it on and then changing the condensing options for each movement.)
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thank you anyway @asherber !
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By creating the example, I realize that a new flow apparently resets the condensing settings — I don’t think I had ever noticed that! Not true for note spacing changes, I think.
i have one more question if that doesn’t bother anybody
i grouped together the choir and the soli, but i don’t want to show the group names in a capella movements. is there a way of doing that also?
Actually, it’s true for note spacing as well.
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I think I’ve got the right answer for this one. 
Showing/hiding group labels is also a per-layout option. You can turn off (all) group labels for a specific system within a layout, but I think not for a larger unit, the way you can for condensing options or note spacing. So you’ll need breaks for each system in the movement.
After you finish your layout process, if you add system breaks to each system (in Engrave mode), then you can switch to Write mode, select the signpost for first one, and do Select More to select all of them. Switch back to Engrave mode, open the bottom Properties panel, and toggle on the “Show player group name labels” property – but leave the checkbox unticked.
Note that this will change the spacing of each system a little bit, since removing the group name gives you a little more space. That’s why you should enter all of the breaks and then turn off group labels for all of them; if you do them one by one, it’s possible that the additional space will change your layout (by allowing a bar from the next system to flow back into the current one).
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Interesting, thank you! I think I’d never noticed that before.
Same goes for bracket & barline changes (by which I mean bracketing in Engrave mode, that give you the Bracket & Barline change signposts). You basically have to set everything up again for a new flow unless you duplicate an existing one that you already changed.
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