Finale and Explorer

Finale supports standard usage of Windows Explorer since Windows 2000/XP. In particular, “drag and drop” and command line switches are supported.

Drag and drop

Drag and drop is supported for opening files. Start Finale and Explorer. In Explorer, select the Finale files you wish to open. Drag them to Finale's window and release the mouse button. The selected files will be opened in Finale. Finale also supports printing from Explorer: see your Windows documentation for details.

Project icons

You can create Finale icons in the Program Manager for different projects. This feature can be used to specify groups of files such as a score, and all extracted parts of a score. Use icons in conjunction with the command+line switches below, specifying different sets of files and perhaps an alternate Finale.INI file, to customize your Finale working environment.

Command line

Finale supports multiple filespecs and wildcards in the command line of a Program Manager icon. For example, specifying “*.musx” on the command line will open all the music files in the current folder. Finale also supports the following Command+line switches. These switches can appear in any order, anywhere in the command line. They are not case sensitive, and can be combined. Either “-” or “/” acts as a switch trigger. Some command switches can be accessed more easily from the Preferences dialog box, such as whether to open a document on startup.

About the Finale.INI file

The Finale.INI file contains custom settings and Finale Preferences that you set within the Finale program. Finale Preferences include dialog boxes and menu settings that affect your Finale working environment. They do not include settings that differ from document to document. Most of the options in the Finale.INI can and should be set within the Finale program itself. Other settings can only be changed in the Finale.INI file. For example, you may need to change the font used for Finale's Message Bar, depending on the fonts installed in your system.

The Finale.INI file can be edited with a text editor such as NotePad. In general, you will not need to edit this file directly. Do not edit the Finale.INI file while Finale is running.

Tip: If you choose to edit the Finale.INI file, be sure to make a backup of it first!

If you make an accidental change, you can either restore the backup copy of the Finale.INI file, or delete the edited Finale.INI file. When you launch Finale again, Finale will re-generate a new Finale.INI. If Finale creates a new Finale.INI file, any custom settings and Finale Preferences you had saved in your previous INI file will be lost.

The Finale.INI file is divided into sections, which are separated by headers that appear in square brackets. The Finale.INI consists of the following sections:

The following paragraphs contain general descriptions of each Finale.INI section, as well as an explanation of the settings within the section. Each setting contains a more detailed explanation, and is marked either Set in Finale, Optional, or Do not edit. The default values are also listed for each setting. If a key is not found in the Finale.INI file, then the default value will be assumed. Settings that are marked “Do not edit” should ordinarily be left alone. Edit such settings only if you are having a particular problem and you know exactly what you are doing!

This section includes general settings that can enhance your Finale working environment.

Do not edit. The default is 0, which indicates that Finale has never been run on this system. Finale sets the Init value to 1 the first time it launches, and allows you to personalize your copy of Finale by entering your name and serial number.

Set in Finale. Reflects the default music font and size that you specify in the Document Options-Fonts.

Optional. When set to 0, Finale displays handles on editable music elements using a default size. You may want to change these values (which are measured in pixels) if the handles are either too large or too small. For example, if you set your monitor to a high resolution, the handles that Finale displays may be too large in relation to the elements in your score. In this instance, the handles may completely obscure an element such as a staccato marking.

Set in Finale. Use the Include Fonts check box in the Compile PostScript dialog box to turn this setting on (1) and off (0). If you're having problems with this value set to 1, try changing it to 2.

When set to the default value of 1, Finale includes fonts when compiling PostScript listings. If Finale cannot find the soft font listing in the WIN.INI file, it asks the PostScript driver for fonts. When set to 2, Finale includes only the soft fonts listing from the WIN.INI file when compiling PostScript listings. If Finale cannot find the soft font listing, it will not ask the PostScript driver for fonts. If the resultant PostScript files are too large, you can change this setting to 0. When set to 0, the fonts will not be included in the PostScript listing. This results in much smaller files, but requires you to manually download the fonts prior to printing the files.

Do not edit. This setting controls the number of fonts that will fit into your printer's virtual memory. Although a higher number may result in faster printing, it may also increase the risk of PostScript errors.

Do not edit. Finale gathers its default settings from the printer driver. These settings control the resolution of coordinates in PostScript files and printing.

Optional. Defaults to 0. If set to 0, the height is automatically calculated from the MsgBarFontHeight and MsgBarBorder settings. Otherwise, Finale uses the height (in pixels) you specify.

Optional. Defaults to 3 pixels. The border is contained within the MsgBarHeight.

Optional. Defaults to 0. If set to 0, the Message Bar font will be 10 pixels high. If you need to change the size of the message bar font, enter the value in pixels. For example, if you enter 12, the font will be 12 pixels high, and the Message Bar height adjusts to the specified size. Hint: Sizes between 8-12 work best.

Optional. Defaults to no specific font, so that Finale displays a sans serif font provided by Windows. Enter the exact font name (as it appears in the Fonts control panel) that you want Finale to use for the Message Bar display. Example: “MsgBarFont=Arial”.

Optional. Defaults to 0, so the Message Bar appears at the bottom of Finale's main window. If you want the Message Bar to appear at the top of Finale's main window, change this to 1.

Set in Finale. Choose Message Bar from the Windows menu. Defaults to 1 so that the Message Bar appears in Finale. If this is set to 0, Finale's Message Bar will not appear.

Set in Finale. Choose Show Rulers from the View menu. Defaults to 1 so that the rulers appear on-screen in Finale. If this is set to 0, the rulers will not appear.

Optional. Defaults to 10. This determines the maximum number of files that can be opened before a warning appears. You can open more than one file at a time, by using the command line, or by using the drag and drop feature in the File Manager. When the warning appears, you can choose to continue to open the files, but you may run into memory limitations. This guards against accidentally opening dozens or hundreds of files.

Set these options in Finale. Use the View portion of the Preferences dialog box to determine what will be saved. They refer to the following settings: Load Window States at Startup, Save Window States at Exit.

Do not edit. These settings are controlled by the LoadWinPos and SaveWinPos. MaximizeWin determines the state of the window: 0 = normal, 1 = maximized, 2 = minimized. WinPos determines the position of the main window. If you want to alter the positioning of your windows, position the windows in Finale, and use the View portion of the Preferences dialog box to Save or Load the window positioning.

Optional. Default serif font is “Times New Roman.” The default sans serif font is “Arial”. These fonts are used for any text elements that you can't set the default fonts for within Finale. The default fonts for the majority of text elements in Finale are controlled in the Document Options-Fonts (Document menu). If the specified font is not available, Windows provides an alternative font.

Optional. These settings control the size of Finale's internal data caches. They replace Finale 3.0's OtherPoolSize, DetailPoolSize and EntryPoolSize settings. If you adjusted these settings for Finale 3.0, you may wish to modify them for Finale 3.5, especially if you have a slower machine. However, the recommended values are considerably higher than the old values.

Set this option in Finale. Use the New portion of the Preferences dialog box to select whether new windows will be maximized or not.

Optional. Defaults to 1. The standard setting of 1 is compatible with print spoolers, but results in larger PostScript files. We recommend setting it to 0 to reduce the size of the PostScript file, and to reduce the number of times a font is downloaded. If 0, printer memory will not be reset after each page in compiled PostScript files. The resulting file will not be “Adobe conforming,” meaning that it might confuse some spoolers, but will download more rapidly. (This setting is equivalent to the Advanced Option, “Clear Memory Per Page” in the Windows PostScript driver setup dialog box.)

Optional. Defaults to 0. This setting determines how bitmap fonts are rendered when an exact match cannot be found. If 0, Finale will try to scale the bitmaps. If 1, Windows will scale the bitmaps. If set to 2, Windows will substitute the “closest” TrueType font. Setting this option to 1 or 2 will avoid potentially long printing times to non-PostScript printers.

Set this option in Finale. Use the New portion of the Preferences dialog box to select what view percentage will be used in new windows.

Set this option in Finale. Use the New portion of the Preferences dialog box to select whether new windows will be opened in Scroll View or Page View.

Optional. Defaults to 1. If 0, CTL3DV2, which displays three-dimensional buttons, is disabled. This is ordinarily set automatically by Finale if it detects an incompatibility or failure of CTL3DV2, but can be set to 0 by the user if required.

Set these options in Finale. Use the Open portion Preferences dialog box to select whether older documents and Templates will be opened as untitled documents.

Set this option in Finale. Use the Open portion of the Preferences dialog box to select whether Finale will ask about converting ties to PostScript or screen representation in when opening older files.

Set this option in Finale. Use the Edit portion of the Preferences dialog box to select whether Undo will take effect past the Save operation.

Set this option in Finale. Use the Edit portion of the Preferences dialog box to select whether a chime will sound when a long task is completed.

Set this option to force two-byte (1) or single-byte (0) font support. The default it 2, which will auto-detect which to support based on your system font.

Optional. Set this option to zero to have Windows generate the Postscript for the text and Finale generate the Postscript for the graphics. This setting works better for some situations, such as printing imported EPS graphics, but requires an Optimize for Portability setting on your printer driver. Set this option to 3 to have Windows generate the Postscript for both the text and the graphics. Default settings is 3.

Do not edit. This entry stores the name of Finale's own MIDI driver. It should never be changed.

All of these settings are set within Finale by choosing MIDI Sync and MIDI Thru from the MIDI/Audio menu.

This section contains optional settings that control the extensions Finale uses for its files. You should only make changes if you have a conflict with another application. Note that the extensions do not include a period. The Backup extension supports the standard DOS wildcards “*” and “?”. For example, “Backup=??_” will save backup files with the first two characters of the original extension followed by an underscore. If you choose to set a backup folder (see “BackupDir” below), you may want to have backup files retain their original extensions. In this case you would use “Backup=*”.

This section contains performance settings that are controlled in, or related to the Preferences dialog box.

Optional. Defaults to 0. Finale does not clean out Temp files when you close files. Although this helps Finale to run faster, if you open or close a lot of files, you could potentially run out of disk space. If you have limited disk space you may want to set this to 1 so that Finale cleans out the Temp files when you close a file. You will notice that Finale takes longer to close files. Turning Undo on and off will also purge unneeded temporary files.

Set in Finale. Defaults to 0, which means that dotted rests are not allowed during transcription. If you set it to 1, dotted rests are allowed during transcription.

Set this option in Finale. Use the New portion of the Preferences dialog box to change the default file name from Maestro Font Default to another name.

Set in the Save portion of the Preferences. Defaults to 1, which means that preferences are saved when exiting Finale.

Set in View portion of the Preferences. Defaults to 0, which means that the Tool menu is not displayed.

Set these options within Finale by choosing Select Display Colors from the View menu.

Set these options within Finale by using the commands in the Edit menu's Enharmonic Spelling submenu.

This section contains positioning and tool arrangement for the palettes in Finale. Most of these settings are saved when Save Window States at Exit is selected in the View portion of the Preferences dialog box.

Set in Finale. Defaults to 1, so Finale closes the sub-palettes when you select another tool on the Main Tool Palette. When set to 0, the palettes remain on the screen when you select another tool on the Main Tool Palette.

Do not edit. These settings store the position and configuration of the tool palettes. The one value that can be edited within Finale is (anchor), which defaults to 0. This value governs where the palette is positioned relative to, according to the following chart:

When anchor is	Palette is positioned relative to
0	top left of application window
1	top right of application window
2	bottom left of application window
3	bottom right of application window
4	top left of screen
5	top right of screen
6	bottom left of screen
7	bottom right of screen

This section includes settings that are controlled in the Folders portion of the Preferences dialog box.

Set in Finale. Use the folders portion of the Preferences dialog box to specify the folders.