The Sibelius Forum

I created a new score that has two voice staves (solo alto and solo baritone) plus piano. As shown above, there is a large gap between the grouped vocal staves and the piano staves. I want to reduce the gap between these groups of staves, but I can't find the setting that does this. I've tried all of the settings in [Engraving Rules -> Staves -> Layout]. In particular, I expected the "extra spaces between groups of staves" setting to affect the layout, but changing that value has no apparent effect on the score layout.

After changing did you try reset space above/below on the layout tab?

That ([Layout -> Staff spacing -> Reset space above/below]) did the trick. Now the staff spacing immediately reflects changes to the Engraving Rules settings. Thanks!

One of THE most silly default settings since Sibelius was conceived is in Engraving Rules > Staves>Justification = "Justify staves when page is at least" 67% full - this can lead to silly spacing on page 2 - change this to 100%. When editing extracted parts I have learnt to ALWAYS select the whole part and under "Layout" Reset Space Above and under "Appearance" Reset Note Spacing - then I spend a lot of time shunting crunched accidentals away from bar lines etc or re-spacing crowded notes in triplets etc. There are so many silly defaults in Sibelius you have to make your own template but then go through all the corrections if you add another instrument anyway.