Formatting last bar of score

Hello,

The final bar by my orchestral score by default is currently take up and entire page of an A3.

I know casting can alter how this looks but can someone guide one so that we are not left with this random last 1 bar taking up the entire last page?

I don’t want to have Dorico fix a number of bars per page as some bars are a lot more complex than others and I want to allow Dorico to intuitively manage this without my interference.

But this last bar issue I can’ seem to solve. Here is a snapshot of what my issue is.


Thank you as always for any assistance!

If you don’t want to fix casting off, which I understand, there are only two options here:

  1. Automatically indent that system, which I don’t recommend for a full score. (Layout Options–Note Spacing, “Justify final system…”)

  2. Go back a couple pages and add a few manual system breaks to shift the music forward a bit, and fill that last page with a couple more bars to make it look better.

Here’s a third option : reduce note spacing (in Layout options globally, or in Engrave mode > Engrave menu locally) so that you don’t have that extra page anymore!

Quite right… I always forget about that one!

Alternatively you could select the final barline as well as one of the first notes on the penultimate page and use the “make into system” option to just add that single last measure to the preceding page (assuming it wouldn’t be too full).

It looks to me like the spacing on the pages before the last page is fairly snug. I’d go back 5 or 6 pages and insert a spacing change (Engrave > Note Spacing Change) that uses a wider spacing width than your default. The idea is to expand the spacing in order to fill the last page. You might have to experiment a bit–use “undo” as necessary till you arrive at the right solution.

THANK you everyone for these great work arounds!

I went with the wider spacing width option and seemed to smooth this our very well I am happy to report. Good to know option this for future scores…

Much appreciated!

I would never have thought of Notesetter’s suggestion, so am glad to see it, as I have sometimes encountered the same problem myself and have always used one of the other workarounds mentioned. Nice alternative!