Finale’s rebarring feature is extremely powerful: almost instantly, it redistributes the notes of your score so that each measure contains the right number of beats. You can renotate a waltz as a two-step, or vice versa.
In the Time Signature dialog box, there is a checkbox called Rebar Music. As long as this checkbox is selected, Finale will rebar your music automatically whenever you change the time signature. There are only two circumstances, therefore, when you might need to invoke the Rebar Music command manually—when the checkbox is de-selected, or when you insert (or delete) a note from a measure, and you want Finale to make the following notes flow into (or out of) that measure to take up the slack.
Whether you use the Rebar Music checkbox, or manual rebarring feature, Finale is smart enough to split or combine notes as needed, rebeam the notes, and stop rebarring at points you designate (such as key or time changes); the program will also create measures as necessary. If Finale reaches one of these stopping points but doesn’t have enough notes leftover to fill an entire measure, it will fill this final measure with the appropriate number of rests.
When you rebar partly-filled measures,
Finale does not “pad” the measures with rests. For example, if you’re
in 
time, and you enter two quarter notes (and no rests)
in each of two measures, when you rebar the music, you’ll end up with
one measure containing 4 quarter notes. To maintain the positions of
the rests, you must actually enter the rests, or you can “pad” the measures
with rests using the Fill With Rests command located in the Check Notation
submenu of the Utilities Menu.
To rebar existing music manually
, and select the region
you want rebarred.
