I’m in 12/8. I needed to create a 6/8 bar at the end of an instrumental ritornello before the next bit. So I added another 12/8 in bar 5, and a 6/8 in bar 4, then deleted the ‘extra’ half with the System Track. Then hid the sigs.
Weirdly, I have no signposts, even though signposts are set to show.
But more importantly, my main dilemma is whether I should have whole bar rests in bar 4, and if so, how?
I can’t reproduce this. I get signposts and bar rests as appropriate.
Hmm. Yes, I can’t reproduce it in a new document. Oh well.
My question is " why wouldn’t you simply use shift-b -2q.?
Could’ve, I suppose. Just a little cautious about everything else not moving around.
Anyway: we’ll leave the mystery of the missing signposts: so that leaves should I use whole bar rests, and if so, how?
I think so, yes. I would set bar 5 to 12/8, then bar 4 to 6/8, and hide both. You should get a bar rest then.
I use varieties of Shift-B, 2q all the time quite successfully. As long as insert mode is off, it never does anything strange (well, except for giving me bars with different numbers of beats from what their time signature says they should have…). 
I tried that, and without a time sig to ‘reset’ the metre, it just shifted everything up: (i.e. maintained 12/8 but deleted two beats of ‘music’). Insert wasn’t on.
Anyway, I’ve redone it all using time sigs and everything is working, including whole bars’ rests and signposts.
You could also have inputted shift-B | (pipe) in the middle of the offending bar and deleted the second half of it with the system track. Just for completeness if anyone’s interested by this thread later on.
