Finale 26.1 MusicXML Updates
May 6, 2019 | by Michael Good
Today MakeMusic released Finale 26.1 and an updated Dolet 7.3 for Finale plug-in. The main improvement in both releases is enhanced support for linked parts in Finale import and export.
Finale 26.1 now automatically generates linked parts after a MusicXML import. Repeats, rehearsal marks, and tempo marks are now imported in a way that works better with these generated linked parts.
In addition, Finale 26.1 includes a new MusicXML export preference to “Include linked parts in compressed files”. When this option is selected, all the linked parts will be included if you are exporting a compressed .mxl file while viewing the score. When importing back into Finale 26.1, Finale will import the differences between the score and parts in page sizes and margins, system breaks, and page-attached text positions into your Finale file.
The Dolet for Finale plug-in does not contain this preference or the ability to automatically generate linked parts after import. However, it does include the import improvements that will let repeats, rehearsal marks, and tempo marks work better with linked parts if you generate them yourself after the MusicXML import.
Another improvement only available in Finale 26.1 is that exporting a folder of Finale files will hide any file conversion or font annotation dialogs that might have appeared in previous versions. This makes it easier to run MusicXML batch exports unattended.
You can see the entire list of the 10 improvements in MusicXML support included in both Finale 26.1 and the Dolet 7.3 for Finale plug-in in the Dolet for Finale version history.
The Dolet for Finale plug-in is 32-bit only and works with Finale 2009 through 2014.5. Starting with v25, Finale now 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. All the MusicXML functionality you need is now available directly in the File menu.
We hope that you find the improved MusicXML support will make moving your music files between applications even faster and more accurate than before. If you have issues using the MusicXML in Finale 26.1 or in using the Dolet plug-in, please let us know in theFinale portion of our Help Center. If you are a music notation software developer and find a problem with MusicXML 3.1 in your development work, please post an issue at the MusicXML GitHub repository.
