I was pleased with myself that I was able to input all of my notation for a big band arrangement I’ve been working on. However, I have wasted about five hours trying to get my parts pages to format for printing with zero success. No matter what I change: rastral size, space between staves etc. I have too many staves per page and there are collisions that settings won’t fix. The videos are frustrating because the person bounces around too much and some of the methods offered in the Dorico help files don’t translate into the buttons etc. in my program which is Dorico 5. Where do I go to find out how to go from score to parts editing? I was loving Dorico, but this formatting business has me detesting it. Thanks for any help guiding me off the ledge…
You really need to show us a sample project, or at least screenshots of the problem pages, and the relevant Layout Options (which is why a project is better).
Hopefully, you just need a few pointers, and we can get you back to loving Dorico again!
You’ve got Frame Breaks at the top of each page, telling Dorico to start a new page at that point.
I suspect you’ve done “Make into Frame”, marking everything between two Frame Breaks to be on the same page. Note that if you keep the first F Break but delete the others, everything will scrunch up into one big mess!!!
I’d also question all the System Breaks on every line – just let Dorico do the spacing, and maybe add a few breaks to get good page turns, and a nice balance at the end of the flow.
What @benwiggy said. Note the numbers in red boxes in the lower left corners, telling you that you’ve got the pages more full than Dorico thinks they should be.
Try clicking the Reset Layout button on the left to remove all of the manual changes you’ve made, and see what Dorico does by default. Then you can try adjusting things like space size and note spacing (and maybe vertical spacing in layout options) until Dorico’s algorithm gets pretty close to what you want. In general, only then should you make detailed adjustments.
Edit: Also, when you’re consulting the online help, make sure you’re using the one for your version of Dorico; if you find help pages through Google, you’ll often wind up with the wrong version. Here’s the help for the current version: https://steinberg.help/r/dorico-pro/5.1/en
THIS is the canonical video to get the fundamental principles of layout in Dorico - one hour well spent (if you didn’t watch it yet)!
Personally (and as others have mentioned), my first step would be to delete any system and frame breaks. 90% of the time Dorico does part layouts very well without much user intervention (with the exception of page turns)
I haven’t set anything, so how do I unset those system breaks? I have no idea how I got to this point. I’ve just been following videos and instructions in the woefully inadequate Dorico help pages.
Thanks for that, but here’s the thing. I haven’t made any manual changes that I know of. I wouldn’t know how to do it at this point.
You’re a genius! Just clicking on Reset Layout made all the difference in the world. As I mentioned I didn’t make any of those manual adjustments (at least as far as I know), so it’s good to know how to get a readable part format. Thank you so much!
Thank you all! Just clicking the Reset Layout button got me close to where I think it should be. How those manual settings got places there is a mystery to me, but now I’m closer to understanding the format part of the program. Thanks to all!
My guess is that you imported an xml file and have not unchecked the relevant option in Preferences>MusicXML import options.
An alternative would be Engrave > Format Music Frames > Lock Layout, which puts breaks on everything.
If you’re used to Finale’s “Lock Systems”, then you might have done the same; but you don’t really need to lock things down to stop them floating away, as in F.