Hello all, hope you’re well. I’m having a nagging issue, a peculiar discovery I just cannot find the reason behind.
I was working on the engraving of a full opera in Finale 2014.5 and I want to move it to Dorico. I exported the score as XML and opened it in Dorico. Now of course there are a number of little things here and there, but the first weird problem I notice is that no matter what I do I cannot hide empty staves on ALL systems. They are hidden after the first but I need the first hidden too (it’s an opera, lots of instruments and voices and I do NOT need them all listed on page 1 even if they could fit).
Naturally I went to Layout Options and set the Vertical Spacing/Hide empty staves to All systems. No effect on the first system. The staves are empty but won’t hide. I then tested this with a smaller score, a piano trio I had in Finale which opens with piano alone for a number of systems. I opened it in Finale and exported it as XML then opened that file in Dorico. The same thing happens, choosing to hide the empty staves in all systems will not hide the very clearly empty violin and cello staves in the short trio.
Is there something I’m missing, a deeper setting somewhere I’m unaware of? If I just start a piece in Dorico itself, I can hide the first system or not with no issue. This just seems to be an issue with XML. If there’s a logic to it I can’t glean it. Thanks!
Turn on Signposts and search for hidden items (time signatures, etc.) generated in the background by XML.
The signposts are all on. There is an “Atonal” at the start but that’s it. I tried deleting it but no change.
Try individually selecting and deleting the clefs at the beginning of bar 1. If they’re explicit they may cause problems. I’m pretty sure this was fixed fairly recently but you’ve not specified which version of Dorico you’re running.
If all else fails, zip up and attach the project and we’ll be able to figure it out in a jiffy.
I just had this with an XML import from Sibelius and the culprit was explicit full-bar rests. The trouble was, just selecting a rest and deleting it didn’t help, as there were actually several explicit rests stacked upon one another and just selecting the visible rest actually only selected the top one. I needed to select everything in the empty-looking bars and then press delete. This enabled the staves to hide normally, as they were only then truly empty.
Hi all, sorry, was away. I had thought of the rests and tried it without effect (I should have mentioned I did), but I would NEVER have thought of the clefs being the culprit. I did what Pianoleo suggested and it worked, that was it.
Sincere gratitude!
I thought the keys at the start of xml imports had been dealt with in last update… I suppose some circumstances still make it a nuisance (in my workflow, it certainly isn’t any more)
So did I. I haven’t had the explicit clef/key problem since the last update, either. Besides, since this affected only the first system and the OP was unable to get any of the staves to hide, I assumed it must have been something else. Explicit rests can still cause hiding problems, though.