Strange stem direction on XML import

[David_Keeffe]

It seems this is a continuing issue. I see this after an XML import. Unforcing all stems in Notations seems to have no effect. “Stems” is unticked in Preferences. Everything is in the same voice.

I can use ‘F’ repeatedly to get there but that’s a lot of separate interactions.

[charles_piano]

The best way to do it in one go is to select all, go to Engrave Mode, right-click > Stems > Remove forced stems.

It appears that it doesn’t work as well in Write Mode, as @Christian_R pointed out in this thread:

Stem direction conumdrum

Good day all! I have a stem direction conumdrum. As has been noted in some other posts, there’s an issue where stems seem to “choose” their direction no matter where the notehead is on the staff. I had the same issue with a project and managed to solve 95% of it this way: [Screenshot 2026-05-06 at 22.39.20] But, I still have an issue with notes well above the B staff line insisting on being “upstem”: [Screenshot 2026-05-06 at 22.29.51] Is there a solution short of manually editing each …

[David_Keeffe]

The switch to engrave mode after selecting did the trick.

[charles_piano]

It can help also to have this option unticked in Preferences > MusicXML for your next imports (but from my experience it doesn’t prevent some oddities like the one you mentioned…)