I import MusXML music scans into Dorico very successfully all the time, but rarely from Finale. Tried the latter today and was impressed. Everything musical was in place. Editorial elements, less so, but that is to be expected.
The glaring omission was the absence of the editorial text block footnotes. Past threads suggest that MusXML does not export text blocks, yet it did convert other elements into Dorico text.
I don’t know who now controls MusXML, but this is an area that might improve in the future.
You’d need to provide the MusicXML file (and ideally also the Finale file, or at the least a PDF) so we can compare the MusicXML file to the source data and see what is included. My instinct is that the text will be included in the MusicXML file, but it might not be being imported by Dorico. Check that the Text items option is activated on the MusicXML Import page of Preferences.
@dspreadbury Sorry to bother you in the midst of what must be an overwhelming onslaught, but I did send you the two requested files in a private message and should have mentioned that the Finale file was done in Finale 25 but converted to MusXML in Finale 27.
Has anyone had success with exporting text blocks in MusXML? I tried drawing some text block frames in the converted Dorico file hoping that the text was actually there and just needed a frame to dump into, but no such luck.
There are, I’m afraid, still hundreds of emails in my inbox that I haven’t yet attended to, and hundreds of threads from the early period after the Finale announcement, that I’ve not yet had a chance to attend to. I’m sorry that I’ve not yet managed to look into this.
Hi @John_Ruggero, you could create a simple project in Finale with the same characteristics of your original file (with text boxes etc…), export as XML and post the zipped file here, and upload also a pdf of it also zipped. There are many Forum users that could maybe help you.
I appreciate your response, @dspreadbury, and very sorry to bother you with this.
Additional investigation indicates that the text blocks are saved in an unformatted state in musicxml files when the file reopened in Finale. I have decided therefore to archive them independently in Word docs and reinsert them into Dorico files, later, were the need to arise.
@Christian_R Thank you for your kind offer and will take you up on that tomorrow. I have been experimenting and getting strange results. Every once in a while Dorico seems to import a text block.
@Christian_R Here is a sample Finale 25.5 file, MUS xml version, PDF, and the MUSxml opened in Finale 25.5. Thank you again for your suggestion.
The problem is that the text blocks don’t appear when the musicxml file is opened in Dorico. They do appear when the musicxml file is opened in Finale, but unformatted.
Dorico seems to be recognizing each line of text independently and then stacking them up on top of each other, which makes unraveling the result like putting a puzzle together.
And as you said, the block must be positioned above a staff. I tried bringing the margin around the last staff down below the text blocks and that didn’t work.
It would be good to know if Dorico can deal normally with MUSxml text block imports of more than one line long. If not, pasting them in from an archive copy is my only alternative
Actually Finale imports the MUSxml text block in the way you describe, but the block can originate anywhere on the page, and most importantly, it is not divided up line by line, so it is possible to put it back as it was by dragging the handles into the correct shape. It is more or less difficult depending on the number of pages in the files and thus whether the initial blocks, which tend to be the longest, outrun the pages.
If so, then this is definitely an area that needs to improve.
