Hello, today I tried exporting an XML file from Finale 27.4.1.146 (which appeared to work normally), and importing it into Dorico 5. Once opened in Dorico, only the first four measures appear normally, and everything after that is basically missing. Please help! Thanks, P
Welcome to the forum.
That will almost certainly be caused by a badly formatted xml file.
There are a number of threads on these sorts of problems. If you could upload the offending xml file, I’m sure someone will be able to provide specific help.
The usual suspects are bars with too many (or not enough) notes. There’s a plug-in “Check Region For Durations”.
Welcome to the Forum! As a former Finale user (using Dorico since day of announcement last August), I have only had this occur when there is a missing rest (or could be a note) in one or more measures (aka bars in Dorico). I’ve released most of my Finale knowledge to make way for all of the new ways of doing things in Dorico BUT I seem to recall a script in Finale 27 that checked for missing rests or notes. I would run that script, fix what it finds and then export XML with ALL XML options engaged. I believe there is a separate XML Export options menu item under File… Hope this makes sense and is helpful.
I looks like there is a rhythmic error hiding somewhere in measure 4 in your Finale file because Dorico is inserting an extra quarter rest in that measure and then giving up the ghost, as it usually does when it encounters such an error. Dorico is not as tolerant as Finale of such rhythmic errors and you will need to make sure that your scores are completely correct in rhythm before you import them.
I’m not sure it’s fair to imply some deficiency in Dorico here because Finale is sloppy in creating the xml error. As I understand it (and I may be wrong), Dorico internally constructs a musical timeline and then displays that as note durations, barlines, tuplets etc. If the underlying data is garbage how should the program respond?
There are probably many ways to handle “bad” XML. Programs like Dorico, Sibelius, and MuseScore will certainly treat XML inconsistencies differently, but the best approach for the user would, of course, be for the XML reader to be as forgiving as possible. That’s just my guess.
On a side note, I’ve had instances where cleaning up the XML via MuseScore was useful. But sometimes, there really isn’t much you can do. I recall one project where I had to create instrumental parts from a score exported as XML from Finale. It had multiple sections with triplets notated as 12/8 against 4/4, which obviously did not import correctly. I had to break the project into sections and manually re-notate every 12/8–4/4 passage.
There are probably thousands of musicians trying to import thousands of Finale’s square rhythmic pegs into Dorico’s round rhythmic holes at the moment. Hopefully, help is just around the corner.
Directions for Making a Round Ark (2025).mxl (400.4 KB)
Thanks so much for everyone’s responses! This is the offending XML file. Any specific clues would be greatly appreciated!
MuseScore reports approx. 60 incomplete bars all of the same type: incomplete bar…
There is a way to fix these in MS, but it’s painstaking to do so.
As @benwiggy said, run the plugin Check Region For Durations in Finale before exporting.
Jesper
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