I’ve been debating asking this question here, since I suspect it should be obvious to me, but: Can someone please tell me how the selection colors work in write mode and what they mean? I sometimes select multiple items, and they all turn orange. I sometimes select one item (like a dynamic) and as I increase the selection, several others turn blue. Sometimes when I select multiple notes on multiple staves, and all items light up orange, and I hit “shift >”, I get hairpins across all staves – but sometimes those hairpins only occur on some of the staves. Sometimes, when I select a single dynamic, several others light up blue, and if I then press “shift >” the hairpin appears on the staves with the blue dynamics even if I have not selected anything on those staves.
I have tried searching the online manual, as well as this forum, and others, to figure this out. What am I missing? Thank you!
Blue indicates that items are linked, such as dynamics or slurs.
Linked items across multiple staves will move or be deleted together. This behavior can be really helpful (moving a hairpin, or changing a dynamic, and all affected staves will be updated), but sometimes it’s not the desired behavior.
You can unlink them if desired by right-clicking and choosing the Dynamics menu. There’s also an option in Preferences to turn this off when copying.
Thank you!!
I can’t tell you how many combinations of “selection” “orange” and “blue” I tried to search in the forums and the online manual to figure this out. It was particularly confusing because Dorico chooses not to link things at interesting moments sometimes. For example, a forte under the downbeat of all staves will not link if some of those downbeats begin with a whole note and others with two half notes. I guess that makes sense in some contexts.