In Windows, when selecting more than one dynamic to copy and paste (to another staff)-- for example, p < f – selecting via [click+shift+click] seems to copy not only the dynamics, but the notes as well.
Is selecting via [ctrl+click+click] the intended way of copying dynamics on their own?
Thanks!
Anything that’s highlighted orange will be copied. You could Ctrl click multiple dynamics, or you could drag a marquee selection around just dynamics, or you could select a passage then filter dynamics, or you could select a single dynamic and then type Ctrl-Shift-A to Select More, or…
Thanks, pianoleo.
Don’t know why, but neither dragging the marquee selection nor using “filter-dynamics” worked for me – they invariably also selected the notes. However, I hadn’t considered [ctrl-shift-A] which works well!
hopefully still on topic: I notice that, in Write, individual noteheads appear blue after certain operations. What do these mean?
That’s a really good question, and I’m not entirely sure I have the right answer. Generally speaking (e.g. when a dynamic or slur is highlighted blue) it means that that item is linked or grouped with another object of the same type. That means that if you move e.g. the start or end of a slur, any linked slurs will move in parallel.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen blue noteheads officially described; from memory I think I normally only see blue highlighted notes when I do something with the same note in a different layout, so when I have both the part and the score on screen simultaneously. Is that a familiar scenario?
I first noticed this when adding a pick-up bar to existing music, and then using [shift+b] to add the number of beats necessary to ‘push’ the ‘dragged-in’ notes back to where they originally were.
Strangely, the single notehead that then appeared blue did not seem to correspond to the size of the pick-up bar – the same note became blue whether I had created (and then ‘cleared’) a pick-up bar of half a beat or a full beat, etc.
However, I have seen the behaviour you describe while a selecting a dynamic, but not the hairpin that immediately follows it – in this case, yes, the blue notehead seems to indicate that the dynamic and hairpin are semantically (?) linked.
Shift-click selects everything between the two points, whatever it is.
CTRL-click selects just the items you click on.
Thanks benwiggy. That’s the general rule that I was following, but I was hoping that – as I was shift-clicking only the dynamics – it would select only the dynamics between the two points, and not also the notes.
Yeah, blue highlighted dynamics are grouped (horizontally) or linked (vertically). Linked dynamics work the same way as linked slurs. Grouped dynamics are, er, grouped! If you have a hairpin folllowed by an f, for instance, and you move the f, the hairpin will grow or shrink in tandem. Grouped dynamics are also aligned in a row.
I don’t have a good answer for your pickup bar question, though.
What a great feature! (I imagine there’s also a way of linking/unlinking such things, but I’ll leave that till I’ve assimilated this 
)
Sure. On the Edit or right-click menu. You can also prevent automatic linking from taking place when you copy and paste material - that’s in Preferneces.
Wonderful! Thanks, pianoleo!
What a great program! I hope I have enough functional neurons remaining to actually remember and learn how to use everything. . .