Too Many Beats dialog box

How to get there

Choose the Speedy Entry tool . The Speedy menu appears.
Choose Speedy > Check for Extra Notes.
Click a measure, if needed, and enter more notes than are permissible according to the time signature (five quarter notes in a 4/4 measure, for example). (If the dialog box doesn’t appear immediately, you’ve turned off the Jump to Next Measure feature in the Speedy menu; click the screen or press zero to exit the editing frameA frame is a layer that contains one measure's worth of music. You can have up to four layers of music per measure, so one measure can contain up to four frames., and the dialog box will appear.)

What it does

Noteman says: Don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.

This dialog box lets you know you’ve put too many beats into a measure, and asks how you want to handle the extra beats. If you’re in the middle of editing a measure, you can tell Finale to wait until you exit the measure before determining whether or not to display. Exit the editing frame by pressing zero, and choose Speedy > Jump to Next Measure, so that there’s no longer a check mark beside it. The dialog box will now appear only when you try to exit the editing frame (with check extra notes selected) of a measure with too many beats.

Leave the measure alone. Click this option to exit the editing frame, leaving the extra beats where they were. (You’d want to select this option if you were creating a cadenza, for example, which typically has more beats than the time signature would normally allow.) However, until you adjust the positions of the notes in the measure, you may see the extra notes "floating over" into the next measure.
Delete the extra notes. Click this option if you want Finale to eliminate the extra notes or rests from the end of the measure, even if it means truncating the value of the last note or rest.
Move the extra notes to the next measure. Click this option if you want Finale to cut the extra notes or rests from the end of the measure and notate them in the following measure. This could result in the last note being tied over the barline.
Keep moving the extra notes until all measures contain the correct number of beats. Click this option if you want Finale to cut the extra notes or rests from the end of the measure and notate them in the following measure; if that measure then has too many beats, Finale cuts the extra notes from the end and puts them in the third measure, and so on until every measure contains the proper number of beats. In effect, this option rebars the music, redistributing the notes until every measure has the proper number of beats, according to the time signature.
OK. Click OK to exit the dialog box—and the Speedy editing frame—and process the extra beats as you specified.