Using keyboard shortcuts  

Many of the most commonly used Finale commands and functions have keyboard shortcuts. You may have noticed that pressing -A is the same as choosing Select All from the Edit menu, -D is the same as choosing Redraw Screen, and pressing -backslash is the same as choosing Update Layout.

You may find it especially useful to select Finale tools without having to use the mouse. In Windows, you can assign any Finale tool to one of the function keys F2 - F12 (F1 and F10 are reserved by Windows). To assign a tool to a function key, select the tool to be assigned, then press and type a function key. To switch tools, type the tool’s function key. You can assign a Finale tool to one of eight keys (F, G, H, J, K, L, semicolon [;] and apostrophe [‘]). To assign a tool to a key, press - and type the key to which the tool is to be assigned. In the Master Tool Palette, select the tool, then click OK. To switch tools, press and type the tool’s key.

And while it doesn’t actually qualify as a keyboard shortcut, Finale’s “power-OK” and “power-Cancel” techniques can save you a lot of time. Any time you’ve crossed through several dialog boxes to make a certain setting (to create something in the Shape Designer, for example), you don’t have to retrace your steps back through those dialog boxes. Instead, click OK or Cancel while pressing the key. You’ll return directly to the score.

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