When I import an xml from Finale I very often get the following problem. Instead of importing one instance of a lyric, two instances are imported, both on the same line. In most cases they lie one on top of the other and it is impossible to see visually that there are two lyrics there. In some cases though, the lyrics are slightly offset and it is possible (sometimes) to select just one of them and delete it. That can’t be easily done when they are aligned because clicking on one of them selects both. To top it off, the offsets are different in Write and Engrave mode, with Engrave mode more likely to show an offset. And, even if the obvious offsets can be corrected, that leaves most of the lyrics in the state where there are two of them, aligned well enough so it looks all right, but open to future problems when it comes time to produce a score and parts for performance.–Is there any way to fix this globally in a flow? Does Dorico have any way to recognize that there are two lyrics at the same note and line number?
Could you use the System Bar to choose everything and then use Filtering to select lyrics for the different stanzas?
Might this be best corrected in Finale before export? Is there something about the Finale file that might suggest why this is coming in like that?
I realise this doesn’t help with existing files in Dorico, sorry. 
I have this problem regularly on imports, but usually just a word here and there, so I delete and re-type. But I wonder – if you select the doubled lyric and then in the properties panel move it to a different line number, would that separate the two lyrics and make it easier to deal with? I haven’t tried this, so it might just move both lyrics.
Act I, Scene 4, Widow’s Walk for Dorico.mxl (58.4 KB)
Widow’s Walk lyric test.dorico (1.6 MB)
I opened up the mxl file with BBEdit and it looks like every lyric syllable is repeated. So Dorico is bringing in both. I don’t know why some are offset in Dorico. The verse numbers are the same in the mxl file. Widow’s Walk in Finale uses verse 1 & 2 for lyrics and chorus 1,2 & 3 for lyrics. But there are no repeats (as it is a musical) and I set the baselines of the lyrics to the same value no matter what the number of the verse or chorus. After I import to Dorico, I set all lyric line numbers to 1.–The upload button dialog box won’t let me upload the Finale file. Checking Finale, I do not have any duplicated verses or choruses. There is no apparent reason why the mxl would have an extra copy of every lyric syllable, so I don’t see any way to fix it in Finale. I started this musical in 1987 in version one of Finale and this is one of the oldest songs, so maybe something weird happened as I moved it from version to version of Finale. I took a look at the mxl of a song written just a few years ago and it doesn’t have repeated lyric syllables. Note that all of the mxl files I am using have been generated using the most recent, final, version of Finale. Widow’s Walk is a very simple song, easy to fix the lyrics. I have some other old songs with up to 11 singers singing different things and those could be a real mess to fix. (Note that I was even putting lyrics into a spreadsheet to try to keep things straight and organize my lyrics to put them into Finale.)------ I did save plain text files of all of the lyrics in Finale as I prepared the move to Dorico.—I will see if I can export to xml to see if that makes a difference.
Example of repeated lyric syllables in mxl file:
<lyric default-y="-86" name="verse" number="1">
<syllabic>single</syllabic>
<text font-size="9.8">Don't</text>
</lyric>
<lyric default-y="-86" name="verse" number="1">
<syllabic>single</syllabic>
<text font-size="9.8">Don't</text>
</lyric>
The xml file also has repeated lyrics.
Act I, Scene 4, Widow’s Walk for Dorico test lyrics.mxl (56.9 KB)
I made a copy of the Widow’s Walk Finale file, copied all of the lyrics to BBEdit (need to figure out how to preserve the hyphens when I do that) then deleted all of the lyrics in the Finale file, and copied all of the lyrics (removing line breaks) into Verse 1 lyrics in the lyrics window in Finale then did an Option-Click to enter them all into the score. As you can see, the resulting mxl file does not have repeated lyrics.