Engrave mode changes applying to both full score and parts?

I’m working on a large orchestral score, and focusing on the piano part. I need to make many cosmetic changes to the piano part (e.g. the drawing of the arcs of slurs, etc.) in Engrave mode. I’d like to make sure they are reflected in BOTH the piano part and the full score.

I manually tried playing with this and found that changes don’t automatically copy from one to the other. So after googling I found Edit > Propagate Properties. The trouble is that the behavior seems very inconsistent. If I make a change in the piano part, then choose Propagate Properties, those changes don’t show up in the full score. But vice versa, they do.

What’s the rhyme or reason to this? And what’s the best way to make sure that my engraving tweaks do appear in both versions so I don’t have to do hundreds of tweaks twice, manually?

Should I come to peace with making a slur alteration and having to issue Propagate Properties EVERY time I do this? Or could I mark up the piano part, select all, Propagate Properties over the whole thing, and expect it to turn up in the full score?

If you’re changing properties while set to Global, the changes should apply everywhere.

I think there are some properties that will only change everywhere if you are changing them in the full score (with properties set to global).

Slurs should be copied to all EXISTING layouts, if “Global” is selected in the Properties panel.

However, it’s worth pointing out that if the bars fall in different places – system breaks, different widths, etc – then the same modifications may not be ideal.

Propagate Properties should work all selected items.

It’s also worth checking the Engraving Options, to see if there’s any global changes to slurs you can make there, instead of manual adjustments.

Thanks to both of you. I’ve never touched the global setting (I never knew it was there) so now that I checked it, it looks like it defaults to local:

I just read the documentation on this, but I find it confusing. Could you explain to me what the intended behavior is, given that I’ve already input many hours worth of music?

If I now switch to Globally, then I start adjusting slurs in either the full score or the piano part, can I expect that the slurs will be adjusted in both, with no further need to Propagate Properties manually?

(@benwiggy yes I understand that due to system breaks and varying widths, that things will draw slightly different - I know that’ll happen - I’m just trying to correct the worst of the slur drawings, and understand how I’m supposed to edit a massive complex score efficiently.)

And once I switch Set Local Properties to Global, does that “stick” to all future changes (unless I manually switch it back)? Or do I have to enable Set Local Properties multiple times for multiple players, views, scores, or situations?

When you make a change to an object, that change will either be Global to all Layouts, or Local to the current Layout, depending on the current setting of the switch.

I’d be very interested to know the kind of tweaks you’re making, if you have to make “hundreds” of them. Dorico’s slur defaults are ‘quite ok’, but they can easily and quickly be improved to a very excellent standard with a few changes of the Engraving Options. Always try to do less in Dorico!

So if I click the Global button, is that button sticky to all future changes I make in Engrave mode (until, of course, I switch back to Local)?

I’m having to do a lot of slur corrections (see here for example: Slur issue) as well as correct some collisions with stave text, or dynamics. I’d rather correct them once rather than have to guess at what’s applying to the full score vs. the piano part. The piano writing is moderately complex, and there’s cross-stave stuff happening all over, so I’m having to adjust stave text and dynamics to avoid collisions.

The property scope toggle is sticky, yes. It affects local properties (i.e. properties that can be set differently per-layout; global properties are always global, regardless of the property scope)

It’s not retrospective: any local properties that you set with the scope set to Locally, remain set locally even if you later change the scope to Globally.

For those cases, you need to use Propagate Properties (which requires you to select the items whose property settings you want to copy, and be in the correct mode: if you’re in Write mode when you propagate properties, only properties available in Write mode will get copied; to include graphical offsets, you must propagate in Engrave mode); or, reset the properties manually with the scope set to Globally: that will override their previous Locally scope.

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I am also struggling with this. One problem is hairpins, which I’ve arranged in one part (properties set to local) but they have propagated to the fullscore and to a custom score, creating a mess.

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It’s worth saying that slurs are likely to need different treatment in different layouts, if they have different spacing, measures per system and line breaks.

Then you’ve got Global on. You can Edit> Reset Position and Appearance of everything in the Score layouts.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place, because what I see is that it’s set to Local. This is in the Propeties panel while in Engrave mode. Where should I look?

Then changes should be local to that layout. Really, someone needs to have a look at a sample document to see what’s going on.