Search and replace

You can search for a pitch, a specific pitch-and-rhythm combination, or even an entire motif anywhere in a score and modify every occurrence in one of several ways.

For example, you can flip every occurrence of a G to its enharmonic equivalent (F), or change two of the notes in a recurrent theme.

To change occurrences of a note or motif (search and replace)

1. Click the Note Mover Tool  . Click the measure containing the first occurrence of the note you want to change. A handle appears on each notehead.
2. Select the notes to be changed. Select one note by clicking, additional notes by shift-clicking, a group of notes by drag-enclosing, and additional groups of notes by shift–drag-enclosing. Note that you can select nonadjacent notes, as long as they’re in the same measure.
3. Choose Search and Replace from the Note Mover Menu. The “Do you want to search...” dialog box appears, letting you further specify criteria for the search-and-replace process. If you want Finale to look for the selected notes only in their original octave, click “Notes.” If you want to search for the selected notes in any octave, click “Scale Tones.” Furthermore, you can confine the search-and-replace process to notes with the same rhythmic values by clicking “Scale Tones &Durations” (matching notes in any octave and with the same duration) or “Notes & Durations” (matching notes in the original octave and with the same duration).

With all of these options, Finale considers the selected notes’ scale degrees. For example, if you’re searching for a C in the key of C, Finale won’t consider C in the key of F a match. Instead, it will consider F a match in the key of F.

4. Click the appropriate criterion button (“Notes,” “Scale Tones,” and so on). The Alteration for Slot (#) dialog box appears, asking what sort of transposition you want to apply. You can specify a different transposition for each of the selected notes; in effect, you have the option of completely rewriting a selected motif.
5. Click Transpose to specify a transposition option for the first selected note (or click Enharmonic to flip the note to its enharmonic equivalent). If you click Transpose, a dialog box appears, in which you can specify the precise transposition that you want to apply to the note. Make your selections from the popup menus, and then click OK.

Note: If you’ve selected several notes, all of which are to receive the same transposition, click Set All. The transposition you just specified will be assigned to all selected notes. Skip to step 7.

6. If more than one note was selected, click Next. The number in the dialog box title, “Alteration for Slot (#),” advances. (A “slot” is a selected note; Finale numbers them from bottom to top within a chord, and from left to right in the measure.) Set the transposition option for this note in the same way. Continue through the selected notes (“slots”), clicking Prev or Next as necessary, and setting the transposition option for each.
7. Click OK (or press return). A new menu, Search, appears. Its commands are Find, which finds the next occurrence of notes matching your criteria; Replace, which modifies the currently selected notes according to your transposition specifications; Replace then Find, which modifies the current notes and then finds the next occurrence; and Replace All, which reads through your piece, measure by measure, in every staff, changing all notes that meet your search criteria.
8. Choose a command from the Search Menu. The Replace All command may take Finale some time to complete.
9. Choose Quit Search from the Search Menu.