Selecting and copying

Selecting and copying regions of music.

The Selection tool is Finale’s universal editing tool. It can be used to select, move, delete, copy, paste or otherwise edit any region of measures and virtually any individual item in the score. In this section, you will learn to take advantage of several Selection tool editing capabilities.

In this lesson, you will learn how to:

1. Select measure regions
2. Expand selected regions
3. Transpose
4. Delete extra measures

Note. To begin at this point, open "Tutorial 4.MUS."

Selecting measures

The selection tool can highlight partial, full or multiple measures. Choose the Selection tool and then do the following (selecting alone won't change your music).

To select a region of music

• Selecting a full measure – Click on the staff lines (without clicking on a note) to select a full measure. (Click only once).
• Selecting a partial measure or measure region – Click outside and above the staff and drag diagonally across any measure region (partial or whole measures) to select a measure region.
• Expanding partial measure selection to full measure selection – Double-click a partial measure selection to expand to full measure selection.
• Selecting a measure stack – Double click a full measure to highlight it in every staff. This is called a measure stack and is indicated by highlighting that extends from the top to the bottom staff, including the area between staves. Many edits in Finale, including deleting measures and some copy and paste functions, require you to highlight the entire measure stack.

Expanding the selection

Any time you highlight something in NotePad, you can expand that selection to include more music. Keyboard shortcuts are particularly helpful for this.

To expand selection

1. Select the Selection tool .
2. Click measure 8 in the vocal part.
3. Hold down SHIFT and press the DOWN ARROW once to highlight the staff below.
4. Press the DOWN ARROW again until the entire stack is highlighted.

Tip. You can also expand selection horizontally using SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW and SHIFT+LEFT ARROW.

Clearing Music

To prepare for copying, clear the music out of measures 8-10 in the left hand piano staff. Here's how:

To clear music

1. With the Selection Tool , select measures 8-10 in the bottom piano staff.
2. Press BACKSPACE. to clear the notes (or choose Edit > Cut).

Drag-copying

A selected region of music can be copied and pasted anywhere else in the document. The quickest way to do this is called drag-copying. If the source (highlighted music) and target (blank measures) are both visible on the screen, you can drag it from one place to another.

To drag-copy

1. Click measure 1 in the bottom staff, then hold down SHIFT and click measure 2 directly to the right. Measures 1-2 are selected in the bottom staff.
2. Click the selected region and drag down over measure 8 in the bottom piano staff.
3. When measures 8-9 are outlined in black, release the mouse button.

Note. The green highlighting indicates you are copying a full measure stack. The target region is highlighted in black if copying a region that is not a stack.

Copying with the clipboard

Finale can also copy and paste using the clipboard. This is useful if the source material and the target measures are not visible on the screen at the same time, but can also be used when the measures are right next to each other.

To copy with the clipboard

Note. To add measures to the end of the score, choose Edit > Add Measures.

1. Click measure 3, bottom staff.
2. Type CTRL +C
3. Click measure 10, bottom staff.
4. Type CTRL +V

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