I finally decided to give Dorico a serious try by entering the notes of a jazz guitar transcription. This involves several pages of Pat Martino-like 16th notes. After entering all the notes, I’m in the process of going back to add in slurs, slides, and grace notes. Here’s where I’ve run into Dorico’s serious shortcomings. Trying to add these things has been like giving dry-birth to a porcupine. There’s nothing intuitive about it, and Dorico keeps extending my slurs beyond where I want them, or doing some really goofy backward slurs to previous notes. I’ve been working on this for hours, and have watched video after video, but cannot get this to work. I’m now going back to Finale to get this project done because I have a deadline. After that, I’ll be looking for other options beyond this program. The steps I’ve followed from AI and videos just don’t work.
Well, that’s not surprising.
Adding a slur is as simple as selecting the notes at each end, and pressing S.
If you had joined this forum to ask earlier, rather than just to announce that you’ve given up, you would have got answers that would help.
Hi @Jeffrey_Troxel , welcome to the forum.
That’s a sound choice, don’t try something new when on a deadline.
I think that was not the best choice. AI has no clue half of the time. Dorico is a very different program compared to Finale. If you really want to see its benefits, try simple things first.
Go through some of these steps to learn more about the concepts and working of the program.
[Edit]
As I see you labeled your post as Dorico-5, this is the link to the first steps guide of that version.
Welcome to the forum
Not sure you really followed through on that.
This sounds like you might be inadvertently adding ties instead of slurs; ties will look for the nearest note of the same pitch, but slurs will snap to exactly the notes you select.
There is a slur setting (for when a note is tied), in Library > Engraving Options which might be what you are getting when you enter a slur and it seems to extend.
Dorico has many settings, once set, your layouts are consistent which is why they are provided. However, you actually have to go through a few of them yourself and decide or be told where to find a relevant one for what you are having problems with.
Unfortunately learning new software can be tedious and frustrating.
I had a friend interested in Dorico, I mainly spent time showing him Layout, Engraving, Notation options. The basic entering of notes, slurs, ties is largely mechanical, learning the new commands as you go (easily written on a piece of paper beside you as you need to know them)—but the result on the page is largely dictated by the settings in the various Options.
Should you return to Dorico, set a little time aside to look through the Options and review them from time to time as you progress.
Otherwise if you want to persist 
search here at the forum otherwise please feel free to ask. We know your frustration intimately because … all of us here decided to learn Dorico too but most would probably agree, it is worth it when you learn a few things and you get a nice layout.
I’m a “long time beginner” at Dorico, meaning I’ve been at it for a year, but for various reasons unrelated to Dorico as such, learning will continue to take a long time for me. Now, I’ve spent a lot of time using ChatGPT to help me with Dorico, and for anyone starting out with Dorico by using ChatGPT, all I can say is: Just. Don’t. Do. It.
ChatGPT will give you so much misinformation and clueless attempts at solving your problems that it’ll just make a frustrated mess of it. Instead, study the excellent Dorico tutorials that Steinberg has on YouTube, and compliment that knowledge with asking folks here.
Did you find Dorico’s online manual helpful?
@SugarFree
Since you replied to the whole thread, I allow myself to answer:
I find the online Manual (Webhelp) very helpful and it is a tremendous well written reference.
It has a very clear chapter structure (Table of contents), and has a Glossary too.
The PDF version of it has also an Index.
The search functionality inside it is very well made (it works even if the term you are searching are not exactly the one Dorico uses) and there are tons of links to related arguments below each little chapter (Related links).
Also there are many links to videos, and you can reach many of the help pages clicking in Dorico on the question mark that you find in the upper right of the Dorico window (this activates the help, and then you can click on the various highlighted sections directly into the Dorico UI), and also in many places in the various dialogues (blue question mark icon).
Thanks for your response. I’ve already watched a ton of videos and was able to enter the notes and ties without a problem. But adding slurs was where the trouble started. They kept going where I didn’t want them, and even note values were changing. I’m sure it’s operator error, but the videos I watch don’t get specific enough to get me where I need to be. I want to be able to go in and add things to notes already entered. Is there a video for that?
Hi @Jeffrey_Troxel, what I suggest (beside all the useful suggestions above) is for you to upload one page of the original score that you are trying to enter into Dorico (if manuscript, please written in a clear way): I am sure someone will guide you through the most efficient way to enter your music, so that your frustration will become appreciation for this very elegant and incredibly powerful software.
(As already written: don’t ever use AI to look for help with Dorico: you will receive totally wrong and hallucinating answers 90% of the time.)
I tried/used all other notation softwares. Trust me: you will not find something better than Dorico (also considering the new functionalities that are being introduced with every update).
Well, I entered four pages of notes from a Barry Greene transcription. I figured this would be a good chance to go through Dorico and figure some things out.
I was really frustrated when I made this post, and I’ll keep working with Dorico. I had to go back to Finale to do this project, and was able to get it done in about three hours. That’s after spending a day and a half with Dorico. I bought a book, which isn’t that helpful, and the videos, while a good quality, don’t get into the intricacies of what I’m trying to do. But I’ll stick with it. Thanks.
With slurs, it will make the longest way first. If you want to end the slur in the first note in a tie, just use the properties panel. Nothing hard about, its simply a matter oof knowing.
Right; I was trying to do both. For instance; I wanted to do a slur between two 8th notes, with the second 8th note tied to the next beat. Dorico won’t stop the tie at the second 8th note, but rather extends it - even over the bar line.
Again, if you would like to show an example of that, we are glad to help.
Following AI instructions is invariably a bad idea, for anything.
As is proper notation - check out Gould, Read, Stone etc.
However, Dorico lets you change this globally in the engraving options.
Are you talking about something like this?
That’s a very standard way of notating that, with the slur going to the last of the tied notes. But if you don’t like that, then you can go to Engraving Options > Slurs > Tied Notes and set this option (Edit: as @arco said, above):
Which gives you:
In addition to setting the Engraving Options, which affects the whole project, you can also select any individual slur, open the bottom Properties panel, and change its behavior.
It’s important to realize that Dorico lets you set all kinds of global rules – per project, per flow, and per layout – and then makes decisions based on those rules. If you don’t like the rules, you can change them, and even set them as your own defaults, and in most cases the rules can be overridden in particular instances like this.
