I wrote a score for guitar. I set it up as a fretted instrument and chose Score+TAB to visualise it.
Now I am ready to submit my score to a player who doesn’t need the TAB so I want to just print the score. I go to Set up > Players > Score. Now Dorico changes the layout and the spacing between staffs completely collapsed.
I went to Set up > layout options > vertical alignment: no matter what I change here, the staff spacing looks always the same. ‘Restore to Default’ is greyed out.
Increasing the Ideal Gap spacing for system to system should be enough to sort this out. Or you could set a fixed number of systems to the page.
The quick and dirty way would be just to add Frame Breaks where you want the music to start on a new page.
You can also have as many layouts as you like - so you could have one layout with both notation and tab, and another layout that’s just notation. You can then adjust the vertical spacing/casting off etc for each layout independently.
No matter what I change in ‘ideal gap’ it doesn’t change anything in the score.
Then we need to see the actual project file to see what’s going on. You’re sure you’re change the Layout Options for the correct layout?
If you have any existing system/frame breaks they might be overriding the layout options set for vertical spacing. Make sure you’ve got signposts shown.
Project attached below. Thanks for having a look at it Benwiggy. I tried changing the layout options for individual parts and for ‘all’ and there were not changes.
Also, after doing any changes ‘restore to default’ is still greyed out. I just upgraded to MacOS Big Sur and wonderer if that could be the issue?
31. Notation begignign.dorico (588.1 KB)
Thanks for your answer Lillie
There are not any system breaks that I am aware off. I am new to Dorico and I do not know how to do those yet! 
LAyout Options > Players > Fretted Instruments: Notation Only.
31. Notation begignign.dorico (465.2 KB)
My issue is not how to see notation only, I know how to do this (please read and refer to the question that started the thread).
The issue is that when I go to layout Options > Players > Fretted Instruments: and select Notation Only Dorico wrongly adjust automatically the vertical staff alignment, resulting in poor vertical alignment. Furthermore, when I want to manually change the vertical staff alignment no matter what I do Dorico is not responsive to any changes nor it allows me to go back to ‘default settings’.
I notice you’ve got quite low values for the Vertical Justification percentages. That’s not going to help. Also, If I change the Ideal Gaps, then that works.
31. Notation begignign.dorico (465.2 KB)
Hi Martin, Yes the pages are very full vertically when you remove the tab, but they’re also showing over 100% fullness before you remove tab. When I reset your layout options to the default, the spacing ended up much more comfortable.
Looking through, you’d set the minimum gaps between staves/systems when there are other items to over 6 and 10 spaces, which is quite high, and I suspect was ironically putting extra pressure on the vertical spacing. Resetting those to the defaults (1 and 2 spaces respectively) and increasing the inter-system gap up to 12 in the Ideal Gaps section gets you much closer to a pleasing result. (The Ideal Gaps affect casting off, the Minimum Gaps adjust the allocation of space after that so increasing those gaps won’t cause systems to move to the next page, for example. So to spread systems out more, use Ideal Gaps - and in a part like this where there’s one staff in each system, the inter-system gap is the one you want.)
If you want control over the staff spacing, you can also set fixed casting off values including systems per frame (page).
Additionally, you had page overrides on page 1 as you added the title information directly onto the page - instead, you can add this in Project Info. If you don’t want to see the flow number ("1. ") at the start of flow headings, you can edit the flow heading to remove the flow number token.
(Another thing that’s useful to know - if you apply the Silence playback template, files are much smaller when you need to share them.)
Thanks Lillie, there are so many functions and options that is rather overwhelming.
I was modifying the guitar score and not the full score. Now it is fixed! The only thing is that for some reason when I go to print and select ‘full score’ I get the 4th page then the 5th then a blank page then the first and then the second! Why is this?
In Logic Pro there is an ‘advanced’ option to get into the gritty nitty of things. It would be great if Dorico had something similar as there are far too many options in certain areas that could be automatised in most cases.
Which brings me to my next question (let me know if I need to open a new thread for this). How do I align all the dynamics automatically? I find it quite tedious to have to go manually to each line to fix this.
I do appreciate Dorico can take some getting used to. In e.g. Engraving Options, there are already “Advanced Options” disclosure arrows on some pages that “hide” additional options from the main list. I’m sure as you get more familiar with how it works and where to go to do what you need, it will all make sense.
For the page order: have you set a page range? Or selected booklet printing or similar?
For aligning dynamics: you can group them together.