I find it VERY convenient to be able to Opt-drag a staff down and have all the staves below it move down also, while maintaining the same relative distances between them.
Is there a way to drag a staff UP and have all the staves below “follow” it up, while maintaining their relative positions?
Thanks much.
If you want to maintain their relative positions, i.e. not change the distances, then yes: simply make a multiple selection of the handles, which you can do with e.g. Shift+up/down arrow or by marquee selecting the handles, then drag one of the selected handles.
Not quite what I meant: I want to maintain their RELATIVE positions, not their actual distances apart. Dragging them as a block, as you describe, is very useful in some situations, but what I need in some cases is the exact opposite of what happens when you option-drag a staff down. When option-dragging down, all the staves below the one you’re dragging go down, but in the process, they maintain their relative distances apart, adjusting as they go, not their actual numerical distances apart. They’re getting closer together.
If, as happens fairly often in parts, Dorico puts a huge distance between two staves (most often because of a rehearsal mark), I’d love to be able to grab the staff at the bottom of that wide distance and drag it up with all the staves below following along but getting farther apart as they go, maintaining their relative distances as they do when you option-drag down.
In that situation, the only way I know how to fix it is to drag one staff up at a time, eyeballing the distances as I go, which is obviously a whole bunch of extra “drags” that you don’t have to do when dragging down.
While we’re on the subject, is there any way to somehow paste the same number of millimeters into several of those numerical distance boxes at one time? Having to click each one and paste or type into each one individually is so cumbersome that I don’t use it—I just drag each staff and, as above, eyeball the distances to make them more or less the same.
Thanks very much.
I think holding alt/opt key while dragging the top staff blue bar does what you are looking for. Hope I’m not mistaken.
[Edit] Actually, dragging the horizontal bar does the trick, but only for the systems under that one. But dragging the first individual staff square does the trick for all subsequent staves. Hope it helps !
Thanks, Marc. But again, not working. What you describe works when dragging down, but not when dragging up. When I drag up, no matter what key combination I try or where in the staff I drag, the only staff that moves is the one I’m dragging.
Could it be that it works on PC’s but not on Mac? When you say “alt-opt”, as a Mac guy I’m interpreting that to mean the Option key, although I’ve tried every combination of Shift/Ctrl/Opt/Command I can think of, and none of them works.
[Edit] OK, I’ve stumbled one thing that at least moves staves upward together; option/drag the lowest of the staves you want to move, and the ones above all move upward, maintaining their distances as long as the highest staff you’re dragging hasn’t reached the top of the page, in which case, the distances between them begin condensing proportionally. (I was, perhaps ignorantly, dragging the uppermost of the staves I wanted to move.)
I also discovered that the same is true in reverse; when option/dragging downward from the uppermost staff, they maintain their exact distances apart until/unless the lowest staff being dragged is at the bottom of the page, at which point the distances between them begin condensing.
Having said all that, the original problem stands: if Dorico has created a large space between two staves, there is no way to drag them in such a way that the gap is closed, and the staves below it are moved proportionally farther apart. Proportionally closer together is doable in either direction, up or down. But proportionally farther apart, apparently not.
And I promise that unless someone comes up with a different thought, I’ll let this thread die a natural death now. 