How to move measures to previous systems in Dorico

I was wondering if it was possible to move a measure to the previous system in Dorico.

Make into system?

1 Like

Select the system break in write mode. Set the grid to the rhythmic value of your bar (whole note if it’s C, dotted minim if it’s 3/4…) alt-shift-right arrow will move the first measure of the system to the previous system
[Edit] As Dan corrected later, the command to move those breaks is ctrl/cmd-alt-arrow

Marc, I believe it is actually Ctrl-Alt-arrow, which I did not expect.

I would like to see Ctrl-Alt-arrow move the break to the next downbeat, and Shift-Alt-arrow move the break according to the grid. That would seem to be consistent with other uses of those key combinations.

I would think shifting frame and system breaks by whole bars would be the more commonly-desired action.

I think it is a good thing that we can move those breaks wherever we want, although it could be useful to have a command that limits the moves to the full bars, whatever the meter.
You are right, it is cmd/ctrl-alt-arrow the right command, thanks for correcting this!

FWIW I have always thought of these commands as “insert a system or frame break where you want it” not “move some music to the next or previous frame.” (That’s probably because I’ve used Sibelius more than Finale in the past!)

With the “insert a break” interpretation, the idea of “limiting moves to full bars” had never occurred to me - I just select a bar line and put the break there, or select the middle of a bar if that’s what I want to do.

I do love the flexibility of inserting a break anywhere, including the middle of a bar.

But I rarely need a mid-measure break. My experience has been that I more often want a break on a barline. And for frame breaks in particular, when I’m doing final page layout, it’s nice to modify a frame by “adding or subtracting” bars from it, and let Dorico distribute them within the frame automatically to make the frame tighter or looser in its spacing.

Another tip: If I end up with a flow having one system on a new page, then I might be tempted to “force-squish” bars together throughout the preceding material (as a result of doing this for years in ‘other software’).

But rather than doing that, I now consider tightening or loosening the Note Spacing for the whole Flow (or at some point such as a metre change).

In keyboard scores with several systems per page, the nice thing about tightening or loosening the Note Spacing, compared with using manual frame and system breaks, is that it nudges Dorico to create more or fewer systems for the whole flow, rather than just increasing the vertical spacing on the last page to fill up the space with one or two fewer systems, which often looks poor.

Trying to move a “dangling” bar in a part to a previous page to avoid a bad page turn. Easy in Sibelius - impossible in Dorico. I tried all the tricks here. Ctrl-Alt-Arrow move the bar but it overwrites what was there, so no help. Does anybody have a quick solution.

dsprung, how exactly are you doing it? It’s not impossible, I promise! :wink:

Click on the beginning of the first bar on the final full page (the page you want to be the final page, I mean). Shift-F to add a frame break. Then from the properties panel, select “Wait for next frame break.” That will force all the remaining music into that frame.

That’s one way to do it; there are several others.

Sounds like you’re selecting the actual notes of the bar and moving them, rather than adding a System Break, and moving that.

I agree with Ben that inserting a note-spacing change usually yields more consistent results than moving bars around manually. For those times when I do need to do this, I usually change the grid value to be as close as possible to a whole bar length to make the process of moving a break quicker. I’d like to second Dan’s suggestion for a key combination for moving breaks one bar at a time.