Reducing/Enlarging

You can enlarge or reduce almost any element of your music: a notehead, an entire note, a staff, a system, or a page. The limits of the Resize Tool are 10% to 1000%.

To reduce or enlarge individual notes

See Note size and Cue notes.

To reduce or enlarge a staff or system

You must be in Page View to reduce or enlarge a staff or system.

1. Click the Resize Tool  .
2. Click on a staff (to resize the staff), or between any two staves in a system (to resize the system). The Resize Staff (or Staff System) dialog box appears, asking you how you want to resize the staff or system.

If you’re reducing or enlarging a system, you see two important options. Click Hold Margins if you intend to reduce the music itself but not the system margins, thus increasing the number of measures that fit on the line. Click Resize Vertical Space if, in reducing a system, you want less space between this system and the next, proportional to the reduction.

If you’re reducing or enlarging a system, you’ll also want to look at the Staff Sizing. This section can be very useful for calculating the combined scaling of staff and system. This can help avoid the necessity of resizing the page and scaling text blocks.

Tip: the absolute staff height is 96 EVPUs or .3333 inches or .8467 cm.

3. Enter the desired reduction or enlargement percentage. Specify the range of systems you want to affect. Click OK. If you reduced or enlarged a system with Hold Margins selected, the measure widths will appear to be uneven.
4. Choose Update Layout from the Edit Menu. To restore a staff or system to its original size, click on the staff or system with the Resize Tool. When the dialog box appears, enter 100 (%) and click OK.

To reduce or enlarge all the music on a page (or the entire piece)

Use this technique for reducing or enlarging the printed size of the music itself, including text and expressions (without changing the actual page size). You must be in Page View to reduce or enlarge a page.

1. Click the Resize Tool  .
2. Click the upper-left corner of the first page you want to resize. The Resize Page dialog box appears.
3. Enter the reduction or enlargement percentage. Click Hold Margins, too, unless you want the entire printed page to shrink (or grow) proportionally. (SeeResize Staff System dialog box for details.)
4. Specify the pages you want to resize.Click OK. As always, whenever you perform an operation that changes the measure widths, you should update the measure layout.
5. Choose Update Layout from the Edit Menu.  

To reduce or enlarge fretboards

See Resize Fretboards dialog box.

To prevent certain items from shrinking

When you shrink notes, Finale automatically shrinks anything attached to them proportionally—lyrics, chord symbols, articulations and expressions, and so on. Under some circumstances, you may not want these attached items to change size along with the notes.

Note: For lyrics, a simpler alternative to the method below is to specify a Fixed Size when you select a type size.

Note: For chords, a simpler alternative to the method below is to specify a Fixed Size in Document Options-Fonts.

1. Open the selection dialog box that contains the entry you would like to remain a Fixed Size. For example, for an Articulation, choose the Articulation Tool and double-click a note to open the Articulation Selection dialog box.
2. Select the item in the list that you wish to remain a Fixed Size and choose Edit.
3. Choose Set Font.
4. Select Fixed Size. This will prevent your item from shrinking when you use the Resize Tool.