I've recently updated from Sibelius 7 to the latest version of Sibelius (2024.3) using both a new Mac laptop (with the latest OS) and an iMac running OS 10.14.6 and I've found out that my printouts of piano pieces on A4 paper are no longer centred on the page. This is true printing to two different printers; and to a PDF file; and using Sibelius' printer driver and the native Mac one. Sibelius even knows it's going to get it wrong because the print preview is shifted compared with the full view of the score.
The shift isn't huge - perhaps 7mm to the right and 7mm down compared with where things should be and where they're shown on the score - but it's enough to make any printout look amateurish. The only way to avoid the shift is to use the Export option to export to a PDF and then use another program to print the file.
This never happened with Sibelius 7 and I've checked the usual things - making sure the correct page size (A4) is selected in document setup, and that it agrees with the dialogue box that appears when you choose Page Setup... - so it genuinely seems to be a bug that's been introduced after Sibelius 7, which still works fine on my iMac.
I'd love to report this to Avid, but I've literally spent a whole afternoon trying to get through to a human being, or even a chatbot that will give a meaningful reply to my requests, but despite me having an active support plan I've got nowhere.
I've never posted on a forum before so my apologies if I've broken any of the etiquette rules and please feel free to advise me how to do better.
Sibelius printouts not correctly centred
There is no phone support to Avid. It's quicker and easier to use the official avid community board. In any case, they already know about this issue and have corrected it in the latest update 2024.3.1.
Sib 6.2, 7.5 and 2024.3.1, Windows 11, 32GB RAM, 16TB 7200RPM Storage, 2TB SSD, Note Performer 4, EWQLSO, EWQLSC, Harmony Assistant and some others. mike@mike-lyons.co.uk
Thank you for your swift reply: that's exactly the kind of help I was hoping for.
I've now downloaded the latest update and from the quick check I've done the issue does seem to be fixed and the image in the print preview is centred once again. I hadn't discovered the Avid Community forum before so I've now registered for that and I'll keep an eye on what's happening over there.
There's an ongoing issue with single click copying / pasting of notes which, once again, has been introduced at some point after Sibelius 7. Obviously I need to post this as a separate topic, but to maximise the chance of it being addressed by Avid should I post on the Avid Community site? And if I'd like to share this technique with other users, as many people don't know about it and laboriously stick to ctrl C and ctrl V, should I post that here?
Many thanks.
I've now downloaded the latest update and from the quick check I've done the issue does seem to be fixed and the image in the print preview is centred once again. I hadn't discovered the Avid Community forum before so I've now registered for that and I'll keep an eye on what's happening over there.
There's an ongoing issue with single click copying / pasting of notes which, once again, has been introduced at some point after Sibelius 7. Obviously I need to post this as a separate topic, but to maximise the chance of it being addressed by Avid should I post on the Avid Community site? And if I'd like to share this technique with other users, as many people don't know about it and laboriously stick to ctrl C and ctrl V, should I post that here?
Many thanks.
There are no avid staffers here. Just a few of us tired old enthusiasts!
Sib 6.2, 7.5 and 2024.3.1, Windows 11, 32GB RAM, 16TB 7200RPM Storage, 2TB SSD, Note Performer 4, EWQLSO, EWQLSC, Harmony Assistant and some others. mike@mike-lyons.co.uk
I thought most people would use [alt]-click where convenient. But of course, nobody reads the manual any more. It's too difficult for them.
Although I didn't get sibelius until version 3, I do remember the Acorn version. At the time my school were thinking of kitting out the it dept with acorn machines, but eventually went for pcs.
Although I didn't get sibelius until version 3, I do remember the Acorn version. At the time my school were thinking of kitting out the it dept with acorn machines, but eventually went for pcs.
Sib 6.2, 7.5 and 2024.3.1, Windows 11, 32GB RAM, 16TB 7200RPM Storage, 2TB SSD, Note Performer 4, EWQLSO, EWQLSC, Harmony Assistant and some others. mike@mike-lyons.co.uk
I’m perhaps in danger of generalising from anecdotal evidence, but certainly my pupils (I’m a piano teacher) have been taught at school to use ctrl-c and ctrl-v, and that’s the method recommended by any number of online videos.
One-click pasting of notes (and other symbols) worked so brilliantly in the Acorn version of Sibelius that the Finn brothers must surely have intended it to be more widely used. Every Acorn mouse had three buttons and the menu button was the middle one; so you’d left click to select something and right click to paste it at the pointer. This left the alt key spare, so a right click always pasted a note into voice 1 while alt right click always pasted it into voice 2. This meant you could select any note in your score (whatever its voice) and then have the choice of whether to paste it into voice 1 or 2.
Double-clicking on a chord would select all its notes for copying - which was great for passages in octaves or triads - and whatever had been copied stayed selected so you could nudge it up or down with the cursor keys (if you’d slightly missed your target pitch) or immediately copy it again to create the next note(s) in the sequence.
MIDI keyboards aside, this worked so well that - once I’ve created a few notes at the start with the keypad to harvest - I’ve always entered my scores this way, with one hand on the mouse and the other on the cursor keys. I can grab most of the symbols I need from nearby bars - which is closer than heading off to the keypad - and I don’t need to look down at my hands.
It was with the PC and Mac versions that the alt key became needed for every paste action, meaning you can now only paste notes into the voice they came from, but of course all the other functionality is still there. On my Mac I used a separate utility (USB Overdrive) to generate an alt keyclick automatically whenever I pressed one of the mouse buttons so I could keep my hand over the cursor keys; but I notice there’s now an ‘Enable copying with mouse’ option in the preferences so alt is no longer needed if you have a mouse with a clickable scroll wheel. Old habits die hard, so I still use USB Overdrive to swap round the middle and right mouse clicks so there's no risk of me scrolling while I'm pasting.
I’ve repeatedly seen guides for Sibelius where beginners are told they should learn not to use the mouse for note entry as the keyboard is much quicker. Really? With a decent mouse (and the cheapest Amazon-branded one, for example, is quite good enough) I’d bet that single-click pasting would be a faster, easier method for many people, and it certainly is for me. But if Dorico is anything to go by, even some of the Sibelius team in times past haven’t understood about entering notes by single click copying: belatedly Dorico has introduced an alt-click system but it works in a different way from Sibelius and I've found it unusable as an alternative to note entry mode.
And it doesn’t seem as if Avid tests single-click copying of notes, because at some point after Sibelius 7, copying a note an octave away from the source note became broken, amongst other bugs.
I’ve digressed much too far from the original topic, and I’ll post properly about the bugs on the Avid Community forum, but if anyone’s still with me I hope you’ll make use of single-click copying.
One-click pasting of notes (and other symbols) worked so brilliantly in the Acorn version of Sibelius that the Finn brothers must surely have intended it to be more widely used. Every Acorn mouse had three buttons and the menu button was the middle one; so you’d left click to select something and right click to paste it at the pointer. This left the alt key spare, so a right click always pasted a note into voice 1 while alt right click always pasted it into voice 2. This meant you could select any note in your score (whatever its voice) and then have the choice of whether to paste it into voice 1 or 2.
Double-clicking on a chord would select all its notes for copying - which was great for passages in octaves or triads - and whatever had been copied stayed selected so you could nudge it up or down with the cursor keys (if you’d slightly missed your target pitch) or immediately copy it again to create the next note(s) in the sequence.
MIDI keyboards aside, this worked so well that - once I’ve created a few notes at the start with the keypad to harvest - I’ve always entered my scores this way, with one hand on the mouse and the other on the cursor keys. I can grab most of the symbols I need from nearby bars - which is closer than heading off to the keypad - and I don’t need to look down at my hands.
It was with the PC and Mac versions that the alt key became needed for every paste action, meaning you can now only paste notes into the voice they came from, but of course all the other functionality is still there. On my Mac I used a separate utility (USB Overdrive) to generate an alt keyclick automatically whenever I pressed one of the mouse buttons so I could keep my hand over the cursor keys; but I notice there’s now an ‘Enable copying with mouse’ option in the preferences so alt is no longer needed if you have a mouse with a clickable scroll wheel. Old habits die hard, so I still use USB Overdrive to swap round the middle and right mouse clicks so there's no risk of me scrolling while I'm pasting.
I’ve repeatedly seen guides for Sibelius where beginners are told they should learn not to use the mouse for note entry as the keyboard is much quicker. Really? With a decent mouse (and the cheapest Amazon-branded one, for example, is quite good enough) I’d bet that single-click pasting would be a faster, easier method for many people, and it certainly is for me. But if Dorico is anything to go by, even some of the Sibelius team in times past haven’t understood about entering notes by single click copying: belatedly Dorico has introduced an alt-click system but it works in a different way from Sibelius and I've found it unusable as an alternative to note entry mode.
And it doesn’t seem as if Avid tests single-click copying of notes, because at some point after Sibelius 7, copying a note an octave away from the source note became broken, amongst other bugs.
I’ve digressed much too far from the original topic, and I’ll post properly about the bugs on the Avid Community forum, but if anyone’s still with me I hope you’ll make use of single-click copying.
