News

Today MakeMusic released version 25.3 of Finale and an updated Dolet 6.10 for Finale plug-in. Both releases include notable MusicXML improvements to both import and export.

For import, Finale v25.3 adds a new MusicXML import preference, “Restrict MusicXML formatting”. This improves on the “Use current document if empty” preference added in Finale 25.2. When selected, the amount of formatting data imported from the MusicXML file is greatly restricted. This is especially true for document settings, system breaks, and page breaks. The formatting preferences for the current empty document are used instead. This preference is ignored if there is no document open, or the current document is not empty.

MusicXML preferences are available in Finale v25 via the File menu. Choose either the Import or Export submenu and then select “MusicXML Preferences…”. The preferences are also available when using the Dolet for Finale plug-in with Finale 2014.5.  In that case, go to the Plug-ins menu and choose the MusicXML submenu, then select “MusicXML Preferences…”.

Finale v25.3 includes an additional 14 new features and fixes to MusicXML export and import support. Some of the most important ones are better export of expressions assigned to layers, better export of multimeasure rests. and better export of page-attached text. Dolet 6.10 for Finale includes all these improvements. You can read more about all these updates in our Dolet for Finale release notes.

MusicXML in Finale v25.3 also supports the new 25.3 features. This includes the new options for short and long crescendo / decrescendo openings, and the new Unicode support for nonstandard key signatures and fretboard numbers.

As with version 6.9, version 6.10 does not support Finale versions earlier than Finale 2009. This is due to the ongoing modernization of our software technology, especially for Mac platforms. If you are still using these older versions of Finale, we hope you will consider upgrading to the latest version. If not, please be sure to keep your current version of the Dolet plug-in.

Also note that the Dolet for Finale plug-in is 32-bit only. Finale v25.3 includes all the added features that used to be part of the Dolet plug-in, plus some MusicXML features that only work in 64-bit Finale. With our 64-bit Finale v25, all the MusicXML functionality you need is available directly on the File menu.

We hope that you find these new plug-ins help in moving your music files between applications. If you have issues with the plug-ins, please let us know in the Finale portion of our Help Center.