I am a brand new Dorico user (though very experienced with Finale). I have a project in 2/2, but in bar 8 Dorico only allows seven 8th notes to appear in the bar (as if it were a 7/8 bar). I do have a pickup bar of only one 8th note, but I don’t see why that would effect only bar 8. I must have messed things up somehow, but I don’t know what I may have done or how to fix this. Can anyone help. Should I attach the document? Thank you.
Have you tried positioning the caret where you want the additional eighth note and pressing SHIFT + B + 1e?
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Likely, you’ve added a new time signature or barline on the 8th eighth.
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Make sure all your signposts are visible and see if there is anything showing at bar 8 regarding hidden time signature. Also, do you have bars past bar 8, and if so, are they all working normally?
How did you set up the pickup bar? That might tell us something, too. There are a lot of unknowns here, but a bit more info could be very revealing.
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That worked! Would you please explain to me what that did, and how, so I can understand it as more than magic? Many thanks.
Yes, all signposts are visible and there is nothing showing up at that location. And yes, the bars that follow are all working normally.
I set up the pickup bar as instructed in the manual, with meter popover and typing “2/2,0.25”
Derrek’s suggestion worked, however. See above.
Glad Derrek’s suggestion worked. What his solution did was use the Bars popover to add one 8th beat to the measure. You can do this to any measure to add beats or subtract beats (using - instead of +), and if you use that popover with just a number instead of following it with e or q or h, etc. you’ll add or subtract entire bars.
You said you’re brand new to Dorico. I highly suggest that, if you haven’t already, you avail yourself of the Getting Started videos and especially start to familiarize yourself with the different popovers and what all they can do. Shift+B for the bars popover is powerful, and Shift+i (for “intervals”, I think) is INCREDIBLY powerful, just to name two of them.
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This was correct. I can’t figure out how that one 8th note ended up going missing, but glad it got solved. Something wonky happened in the course of your work that you obviously didn’t intend to have happen, and I really wish I could figure out what it was to warn you about it! 
But at least you’re good for now.
Dorico’s approach to to time signatures and barlines can appear confusing, but it does have a logical basis.
- All that time signatures do is to rearange the existing music time into new bar lengths. They will not add extra musical time, unless you have engaged insert mode (I).
- The scope of this rearranging is up until it meets another time signature or a manual barline. (A manual barline is any barline that you have manually added, though most common are double barlines and repeat barlines)
- If there is insufficient musical time to create whole bars in the new time signature, Dorico will end the process with an incomplete bar (there have been requests for this to be flagged with a warning).
- This could have happened to you. When you created the pickup, Dorico will have grabbed the first eighth of the original first bar for the pickup, everything else would be shunted an 8th, which would leave an 8th missing from the final bar before the manual barline.
I strongly recommend you do some experiments. eg. write some scales in 4/4 and end with a double barline. Then change the time signature (at various places, with/without pickups, with/without insert mode), and notice the differences.
You will soon see how it all works!
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