Some users have seen issues where they have been getting Blank Pages when priting from Finale.  MakeMusic seems to be aware of an issue with Brother MFC model printer drivers/printers that causes Finale to output blank pages when printing. This can even happen when printing documents as a PDF files or creating a Preview if the Brother printer or printer driver is the only one installed.  I have also heard of this happening with Adobe Acrobat 8 and its Distiller.

There does seem to be a work-around that will allow you to create a PDF file of your document after setting up a “dummy printer.”

1. Add a new “dummy” printer that can be used as the default printer. 
2. 1. Open your Macintosh computer’s System Preferences (via the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the screen).
   2. Click the Print & Fax icon in your System Preferences.
   3. Click the + sign in the bottom left corner to add a printer.
   4. Click on the IP icon at the top and then make sure it reads “Line Printer Daemon - LPD”.
   5. In the Address section, type in the number 11.1.1.11, and then you will see “Generic Postscript Printer” at the bottom.
   6. Click the Add button.
   7. This should now show up in the list as the Default Printer
3. Once you are done setting up the ”dummy printer”, open Finale.
4. Go to the File menu >> Print.
5. Select the Preview option in the Print window to open Macintosh’s Preview application. 
6. When Preview opens, you will see your music. Go to the File menu >> Print in the Preview application. 
7. Choose your Brother Printer and click Print to print your document.

Hope you guys find this helpful.  Happy belated Birthday to Finale!!

If you have an HP Printer, Vista or XP, and are running into an issue where your parts or scores are printing the first couple of lines, but only printing out the notes for the remaning lines on the page, HP has a fix for the issue.

I ran into this with a client this morning and MakeMusic refered me to HP.

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There is a setting within Finale 2007 and 2008 that will update the multi-measure rest to default size and group any blank measures into multi-measure rests - typically this is a great feature, but if you had applied any manual spacing to the document, once you chose to print the document, this setting would wipe out your manual spacing work.

In this case you would probably want complete control of the spacing, here is how you can disable this setting:

(mac)

Go to your Finale Menu and select Document Options.

Within the Document Options Menu select Mutli-Measure Rests.

Uncheck “Update Automatically” and then click OK.

(win)

Go to your Document Menu and select Document Options.

Within the Document Options Menu select Mutli-Measure Rests.

Uncheck “Update Automatically” and then click OK.

Since Window’s operating systems do not have any direct to PDF functionality, it is necessary to utilize a third party program that will allow the creation of PDF files. Luckily, there are many free options that perform wonderfully!

The programs that I use are:

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