I am a finale notepad beginner(mac user) and have a few basic questions. Question1: How do you draw the end lines (two vertical lines) at the end of the measure of your last measure of your song?
(NotePad only tells you how to draw repeat lines.) Question 2: Sometimes you write a piece in the way that the first measure's length is shorter than the rest of the piece, e.g. for example, if your piece is 4/4 and the first measure has only three eights notes or something. in this case, you need to insert a sort of "end lines?" (twro vertical lines, I don't know the terminology here) to indicate that there is no notes missing. I can draw a vertical line right next to a line Notepad automatically creates, but in this way, notepad plays the first measure as if it is 4/4 long. How do you draw such a line that Notepad understands my intention? Question3: As in Q2, I tried to write three eights notes and wanted leave the first eighth note independent and put the second and third note together by having "bar notes"(sorry, I don't know the tech. term). But Finale automatically connect the first two notes and leave the third independent. How do you change it? I guess if I knew the terminology I can search use help, but I cannot even search well yet

Question 1. Bar lines and articulation marks are only graphical. They look good on paper. They don’t mean anything on the playback. Try writing a second ending to see if NotePad automatically inserts double bars at the end. Finale does.

Question 2. The first measure of a score that doesn’t have the full beats of the Time Signature, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, etc, is called a “Pickup” measure. I couldn’t find anything in NotePad that said anything about pickup measures, so it probably isn’t there, unfortunately. Use the first measure as your pickup measure. Insert a half rest and an 1/8 rest, then your 3 1/8th notes.

The reason you got NotePad for free, is they want you to upgrade, right?
Buyer Beware! My first copy of PrintMusic, I had to upgrade my sound card in my computer. In my upgrade (2nd) copy of PrintMusic, there was a bug on playback. It “faltered” a split second on playback; never at the same place.
I finally bought Finale 2002 which works fine. I’m sorry I bought Finale 2005. I didn’t need it. I fell for the “hype!”

Feel free to email me. (I think you click, or right click on my name?)

zrobert

Thank you so much for your help, zrobert!! I will try your suggetions to see what happens. I am getting other problems with Notepad at the moment, but I guess I need to sit down and try to solve them first to to see if I am doing something wroing, or the software is not just capable of doing things I want. Thanks again for your help!!