Irregular bar in mid-flow

I am engraving a hymn (Old One Hundredth, or the Doxology) which begins with and irregular bar, and the tune ends with an irregular bar; but the hymn is set with a full-size bar immediately following (for the “Amen”).

I have set the music–but my next-to-last bar (the bar before the “Amen”) should be an irregular bar. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to shorten the bar.

In Sibelius it’s easy–Split the bar, and delete the empty part of the bar you don’t want. Voila! You’re left with an irregular bar. How can I achieve this in Dorico?

(For the record, I have spent more than an hour searching the Dorico documentation, and this forum, searching for phrases such as “irregular bar”, “insert irregular bar”, “split bar”, and many others. Lots of search hits–no help.)

I’d very much appreciate help from the community. I’m spending my music time during the summer creating a new set of worship liturgies with Dorico, in part as an opportunity to learn Dorico (after 15+ years with Sibelius). This one bar–one frustrating bar–is keeping me from completing this flow.

You can simply create a barline (using the shift+B popver and typing | into it) wherever you need it. Dorico will take care of the rest. You can also create an appropriate time signature and then hide it using the property panel.

I had thought that I understood the barline popup to add a line–not to (in Sibelius terms) split the bar. But lo! Adding a barline split one bar into two: I just deleted the (now) empty bar. Splendid!

Thanks very much!

You can also specify a pickup bar (Shift-B). e.g. 3/4,1 as a meter (time sig) gives you the initial measure with just one beat (crochet, quarter note) before it creates the barline for the next (first full) measure.
Also if you are splitting bars at the end, sometimes you need to delete the last empty measure (use -1 in the bar write popover, Shift-B) or Trim flow from the Write menu.