To speed up its operations, Finale doesn’t constantly recalculate the positioning and page layout of measures within your document. Instead, this recalculation only takes place when you request it by choosing Update Layout from the Utilities Menu (Command-U).
If you enter Page View without choosing Update Layout, you may discover strange measure spacing if you’ve made any changes to the widths of measures (by using, for example, the Resize Tool, the Music Spacing commands, the Page Layout Tool, or the Measure Tool). Any of these actions can result in very wide or very cramped measures, or duplicated or missing systems on each page. By choosing Update Layout, you tell Finale to lay the measures out again within each system, taking such changes into account, in order to create attractive, neatly justified systems with appropriate measure spacing.
To further save you time, when you’re in Page View, Finale only readjusts the measure layout from the page you’re viewing to the end of the document. In other words, if you’re satisfied with the layout of the first five pages, you don’t have to wait for Finale to readjust them; scroll to page six before choosing Update Layout. (Update Layout affects the entire piece if you’re viewing page one, or if you’re in Scroll View.)
Update Layout performs another useful function. One way to manually arrange measures on the page is to use Finale’s measure group features (such as the Fit Measures command in the Page Layout Menu and the Utilities Menu, or the Selection Tool up/down arrow trick). For details on these techniques, see Measure layout. If you ever want to delete such measure groups (and restore all measures to their original “floating” status), press shift while selecting Update Layout from the menu.
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