I’m a little stumped on what to do when pasting lyrics from staff to staff. Imagine a typical hymn setting, scored SATB, one staff per voice. A syllable might be a two-note melisma in one part, but a single note in another part. The syllable alignment under the melisma will be left-justified; underneath the single note, that same syllable will be centered.
When I type lyrics into one line, then copy them and paste them into another, I can’t figure out how to get the automatic re-alignment to apply all the time. Sometimes it seems syllables shift to accommodate their new rhythm, but other times, I have to go in and re-type the lyrics.
I’ve found that just pressing Shift-L on the pasted line, then hitting Spacebar or hyphen (as appropriate) many times to rapidly step through the lyrics, re-aligns the syllables properly every time — but that’s still a manual, note-by-note fix, and Dorico seems to assign “Whole word” status to syllables that were originally of type “End” when I do this.
When the different voices are not strictly homorhytmic, I rather select the whole line from, say, sopranos, copy, then paste one syllable at a time on mezzo-sopranos with the lyrics popover, dealing with melismas as they come. Rinse and repeat with tenors and basses.
I know lyrics aren’t attached to notes, so “intelligent pasting” can only go so far because Dorico only “knows” so much about what note(s) a lyric “belongs to.”
(For anybody reading this ages and ages hence, who might be confused: Marc’s solution is to paste using the popover. My faulty original approach was to select the first note where the lyrics should be pasted, then just hit Ctrl-V. It’s better to select that note, then press Shift-L to activate the popover, and then start pasting; the popover will paste one syllable at a time.)
Depending on how different lyric placement is from one part to another, I might filter lyrics from one part and ALT+Click it onto another before going back and using ALT+Arrow, etc. to move errant syllables into place. Of course I only use this when lyric placement is identical or nearly identical between the two parts. For any larger differences, I would use Marc’s method.