I had a layout with three people/instruments: treble viol, tenor viol, bass viol, in that order. I changed the first person’s instrument to tenor viol (because the part I had entered went too low to playback all the notes). The instrument changed, but its staff jumped from the top of the three in the group to the bottom. I had to use a custom staff order to get it back to the the top staff position.
Why did it do that?
It sounds like Dorico had an automatic player sorting setting active, in the left Players panel in Setup mode.
When you reorder players manually, this should get set to “None” so your custom order is preserved.
If you reorder your players now, check that the sorting setting is now “None” so any future instruments you add won’t affect your current order.
Thank you, Lillie. It was set to ‘orchestral’ and I have set it to ‘none’.
And just from curiosity, is there an explanation for why Dorico would have an opinion about the order of three viols in an ‘orchestra’ and especially why the order would be (from the top): tenor1-bass-tenor2? If the answer is “because that is how you have the pan settings in Play mode”, which I do, then Dorico is a mad genius.
This is the order in which the viols are listed by default:
Treble Viol
Treble Viola da Gamba
Tenor Viol
Tenor Viola da Gamba
Bass Viol
Bass Viola da Gamba