Tips related to printing, publishing, PDF, and so on.
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Here are some tips for Finale users working with PDF files in Adobe Acrobat:

  • If you want to publish a sample of your music, you may want to make it non-printable (using the security options in Acrobat). You may also want to prevent the user from making changes to the document (also using the security options).
  • If you use security options when sending work to a client, there is often little need remembering the security passwords yourself (so use different security passwords for all your files). Unless you make a lot of changes after the PDF was created, it's probably more convenient just to create a new PDF file from the original than to remember/find the passwords.
  • Don't send the password for a PDF file in the same e-mail as the actual PDF attachment.
  • Create thumbnails! This is a convenient navigation method for most users, so support it in your own documents. (If the music consists of smaller pieces, you may want to make the thumbnail view the default opening view for the PDF document.)
  • Create bookmarks! (If your music is a long piece, you can use the different sections of the music as bookmarks.) When you've created your bookmarks, the bookmark view is great as the default opening view.
  • If you want the client to get additional instructions, a good way is to put Text Notes (with the Text Note tool in Acrobat Exchange) in your score. The text notes will not print.
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(It seems to be no way that the Page entry field can be copied to the clipboard on the Mac, so this tip is for Windows only.) If you use a keyboard macro program with Finale, here's a sequence to print the current page:

  1. Switch to Page View
  2. Select the text in the Page entry field (at the bottom left). In Finale for Windows, this is easiest done by pressing Alt+A.
  3. Copy the text to the clipboard. This can't be done with the normal Ctrl+C technique. You can instead use any of these methods: Pressing Ctrl+Insert, or bring up the local menu for the entry field by pressing Shift+F10 and select Copy from that local menu
  4. Open the Finale's print dialog
  5. Paste the clipboard contents into the Page Ranges input field (Ctrl+V)
  6. Start printing