Best Way to Mass Convert ALL Finale Files to MusicXML with ONE CLICK!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Dorico Templates Available here to download - www.kevinlynchnj.com/store

[@DrCry1]

Thanks for the video! I've been using Finale since 1989 (1.1) and I was overwhelmed thinking about changing 1000s of files into XML. It only took about 80 minutes to do all of my files! Relieved!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Glad I could help!

[@enriquesanchez2001]

YEP - just tried it earlier today. It worked great! Thanks! ♥

[@TimBuell]

This is incredible and so helpful. Thank you!

[@RunningWolfMusic966]

Wow ... awesome video. Just gave me some serious calm knowing it's not the monster amount of work I feared. Thank you Kevin.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@makingmusicfun]

Thank you! I'm converting files right now.

[@sallygalet2511]

Thank you so much Kevin! This tutorial is a wonderful gift as I have may thousands of Finale files.

[@susiehb2093]

❤Thanks!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Wow, thank you so much!

[@starrmusicacademy]

Thank you!!! This video saved me from hours of work and frustration.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Glad it helped!

[@davidhuertaponton]

Many thanks!! For older Finale users it's a great solution.

[@CalledtoLife]

Thank you Kevin- very helpful!!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Very welcome!

[@MarkE-v8o]

Thanks - this is a really useful video and I shall certainly be preserving my Finale files like this. Many thanks.

[@DavidSolomons]

44 years of work - about 24 thousand musicxml files created! Finale crashed from time to time but a good morning's work! Many thanks :-)

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Nice, David!!!! So happy to hear. How long did it take???

[@DavidSolomons]

@@KevinLynchMusic I started around 4 am and completed it around 12.30 pm, but that includes meals and rebooting the computer! 🙂

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Wow, that's impressive. Glad it worked!!

[@michelrrr1]

What if you also have pdf files in this folder ?

[@DavidSolomons]

@@michelrrr1 It would ignore files that are not Finale files.

[@humorguy1]

Thanks so much for this video! You have helped reduce my frustration and anxiety over Finale's recent announcement. More importantly, I now have an option on how to immediately archive all of my hundreds (thousands?) of Finale songs!

[@jaakkomantyjarvi7515]

THANK YOU! As a composer and Finale user a few years away from retirement age, I was seriously pissed off at the thought of having to learn completely new software at this point in my career, besides struggling to come to terms with this specific issue -- decades of work in thousands of files. Since I am a user who only RTFM when absolutely necessary to find out how to do something I don't know how to do, I wasn't aware of this mass migration option.

[@hartmanmark]

Thanks!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Wow, thank you so much Mark. Appreciate the gift!!!

[@jfrananello5]

Thanks for this video. I've worked with Dorico, I agree that this is the future about music engraving. Even of that, Finale is great. The worst about it was the disrepectfull for the comunity in the last years.

[@mikevirtualteacher]

Great video Kevin! You've potentially collectively saved many thousands of users many MULTIPLE thousands of hours! Earned my sub for sure! : )

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Glad it helped!

[@panacomposer]

Thank you soooo much!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

You're welcome!

[@rodterrell304]

I have been converting my finale files to Dorico for a while now. This is great info. Thanks

[@KevinLynchMusic]

How is that working for you? Do you have any suggestions or tips for workflow and getting things to look right?

[@EnricoNichel]

Thank you, Kevin. Yesterday I started converting some of the many Finale files I have, but I wasn't aware of that subfolder feature, which will tremendously speed up the remaining work!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Glad I could help!

[@peterlynchmusic]

Thanks for the great tip and how-to. I moved over from F to D three years ago. No regrets and, yes, there are many things to learn (not least in the "Engrave" area of D), but the pain is very much worth it. There are also many helpful videos and tutorials by the YT community. I would suggest that Dorico's own Anthony Hughes's videos are a great place to start.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Thank you!!

[@DK-mwmfl]

Thank you very much Kevin, your video gave me an indescribable relief. Having almost 10.000 Finale-files on my computer, the recent news about Finale stopping development and support was a real shocker (to put it mildly..) At least the conversion to MusicXML is no burden now.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

That’s a lot! Yes. Some people have done them in batches and small chunks but 10K files are no problem from those I’ve asked. Let me know what happens!

[@DK-mwmfl]

@@KevinLynchMusic It all went as smooth as a whistle

[@vocaljaq]

thank you!

[@Gaaach]

Thank you captain for this video and amazing trick ❤

[@mixedupfilesmusical4038]

Thanks Kevin!

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

I first got Finale when it came on 10 floppy disks. The prospect of moving to Dorico is daunting. Since I am 83 maybe I'll just stay with Finale until my coda

[@XE1GXG]

I still have a ways to go, congrats. But same situation: all of my orchestral and chamber music is Finale-based. Or in manuscript. Dorico I just bought, but already am ...feeling...depressed...;)

[@carpenterhillstudios8327]

Thank you for the you tube video. I have been reeling as an amateur composer just getting some pieces preoduced. 23 years of files and orchestrations . I'm not a pro but I can say that the effect is the same on the creative side.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Glad to help!

[@composernotes]

thanks for your help on MusicXML

[@KevinLynchMusic]

No problem!

[@susiehb2093]

With the profoundest thanks, I send you a small gift via the thanks button. If you had any idea how much of a relief this one, short video is to an old and fairly stupid composer, you would probably become unbearably proud. THANK YOU SO MUCH for your clarity. Do you have a list of your other videos?

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Thank you Susie!! It's much appreciated

[@PhilipBuckmaster]

There’s one thing to note when doing this: if you have an old mus file as well as an identically named musx file (within the same folder) and you want to keep both, the conversion process will only keep one of them as it will overwrite its own mxml file when it does the second one. In this case, the best thing is to find and rename the old mus files with a unique file name.

[@ErikVeldkampMusic]

great tip, thanks!

[@adblau1]

This is great, thank you

[@KevinLynchMusic]

You're very welcome!

[@jasonmeyermusic5639]

Hi Kevin and thanx for the enormous tip! I've got a new Finale 26 problem. 1) Suddenly the TEXT TOOL died and went to Finale heaven (Hell) If cleared all the centuries of caches and it still doesn't work. 2) I know there's a way to do PDF batches Finale too, 'cause I did it once. But I can't do it again and no longer find the link ...any clue. Thanx again, Jason

[@mattwallis1893]

Thanks for this tip. Very helpful. It would be good if there was a feature Dorico that could do a similar thing (look for Finale files in subfolder and then do a conversion into Dorico). Now I’ve gotta learn Dorico, but I’m actually quite excited to take this journey.

[@tjwtrumpet]

You da BEST - thank you!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

You're welcome!

[@willcwhite]

bless you

[@RichardFordcomposer]

Thanks, Kevin! Very clear. I may just send it all to my copyist.... lol

[@KevinLynchMusic]

I already did it for you !!! 😊

[@drphilChemist]

Thank you for the vid! Before today I was a bit bummed since I never upgraded to Finale 27 which has much better XML translation features. 25 will still do the mass translation of a folder but using a lower export version and with none of the dialog box features you show in your video. HOWEVER, an email today from makeMusic says that users who opt for the "crossgrade" offer to Dorico will also be able to download and run version 27 specifically for the better XML translation features. Whew! ... I am also looking forward to the push to Dorico which I've known to be superior to Finale, but I didn't want to pay for Dorico and take the time to learn new software. Now its time to "face the music" and migrate over, but I'm sure I'll be far happier with Dorico Pro once I get over the migration hump.

[@mixedupfilesmusical4038]

Dorico is Amazing. I adore it

[@timothyreynolds6255]

Thanks

[@mixedupfilesmusical4038]

Also the letter J is your BEST friend. That bring up the JUMP BAR- u can type in what you wanna do and it’ll offer a menu - and voila! It’s hands down my fav feature.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

THANK YOU! Haha, that's a good tip. I purchased a Stream Deck profile for Dorico 5 to help with my new workflow.

[@mixedupfilesmusical4038]

@@KevinLynchMusicoh yeah stream deck is chefs kiss!

[@JorgeSilvestrini]

@@KevinLynchMusic hey Kevin, where did you purchase the stream deck profile? That could save some time with the learning of Dórico for me as well.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

@JorgeSilvestrini From Notation Central! It’s part of NYC Music Service.

[@JoelEverettComposer]

Thank you good Sir! At least a salvageable back up for future importation.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Glad to help!

[@williamparsons3018]

This is the headache that started when I got the "dear john letter" from Finale......how long is it going to take me to change ALL my finale files to something usable?........YAY! I'm so relieved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

@@williamparsons3018 I’m glad! I recommend starting with a small chunk first.

[@lesdeutsch9170]

Good news! It turns out that almost all of those "Finale Legacy" files are simply .mus files that are missing their file extensions. I presume this was only the on Mac systems, since Mac OS did not require file extensions back then. In any case, you can add the text ",must" to these files and the Finale translate process will then work on them. There are many ways to add this text in a batch process - including selecting them, control clicking the group, and selecting "rename."

[@balmeter]

Hi. so, if I had a legacy file - for example - LetItBe.mus, do I rename it LetItBe,must.mus ?? I am on Windows. Then it will convert to musicXML? I have Finale v27, but have Finale files from 25 years ago. I had plans (some day) to convert to .musx and do all the reformatting.

[@lesdeutsch9170]

@@balmeter No. If your file already has the .mus extension, then nothing will change. It is possible your file is too old to be read my Finale. I found some of these dating back to before 2000.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

.mus and .musx can remain as is without changing the file name extension.

[@BuckthornStudios]

I downloaded and installed Finale 27 today in Windows 10. Worked fine. Then did this process and it worked!! However, I chose the compressed file version, so I will have to go back and redo to the musicxml (uncompressed) version, yes? Thanks for this film, so helpful.

[@kevingalie]

Kevin (I'm Kevin also) - for orchestrations in Layers - OPEN ISSUE: Finale Conversions: When we export finale and then import to Dorico, former layers 1 and 2 of Finale are simply in a single voice in Dorico, thus condensing-uncondensing is a game stopper. Please explain the exact step-by-step method of having Dorico 'see' Finale 'layers' as 'voices' in Dorico - so far this seems not possible without the huge task of pre-separating layers in Finale: - Previously posted: Dorico does not read Finale layers, correct? So perhaps the best way is to 'prep' the Finale files first as follows? : 1.)Create extra empty staves for every instrument that has 1 & 2 layers, etc. 2.) in Finale go to layer 2, active layers only, do whole staff cut and past of layer 2 staff into empty staff. 3.) then do export out of Finale and into Dorico. Exploding? Some have suggested exploding in Finale, but it seems a new staff still needs to be created, and I personally have never trusted exploding. I'm not convinced exploding involves less work then what I've suggested above. A.) If the above 1., 2., 3.) is a correct way to do it, has anyone created a MACRO in Finale to do these steps since they're fairly mechanical steps. Is there any easy way to convert Finale to Dorico that we're missing or is it truly this labor intensive? Our first couple of attempts basically have been sub-optimal (understatement) , we have 100's of pieces for full orchestra . B.) if the above is true, curious why designers of Dorico have not created a path for recognizing Finale layers and converting them to Dorico condensing? To be absolutely clear here, the problem at this point, we believe, is not understanding Dorico, that's coming along, the problem is the conversion from Finale.

[@XE1GXG]

Perfect.What about all my chamber music with aleatoric notation?

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Honestly? I’d stick to Finale or hire someone!

[@nicholasragusano2284]

I know that Finale can "read" pdf files and create a .musx file. It's not very good, but it does work on some simpler items. Is Dorico going to provide that ability at some point?

[@sallygalet2511]

Merci !

[@KevinLynchMusic]

@@sallygalet2511 vous etes les bienvenus!!

[@sallygalet2511]

The conversion took 10 hours but all was done this morning.Amazing, so grateful Kevin 🙏

[@MichaelJustGreat]

(NO SHOUTING) YOU SHOULD CONVERT YOUR FINALE FILES INTO MUSICXML BUT I BELIEVE ALSO IN PDF SO THAT YOU HAVE A WAY TO KNOW HOW IT DID LOOK IN FINALE THE WAY YOU HAD INTENDED.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

YES BOTH ARE TRUE! Lol

[@ronlevymusic]

very helpful, thank you! I’m curious how many MUS/MUSX files were in your music folder that converted in 5 to 10 minutes. [I converted a folder of about 150 files yesterday which took about 11 minutes.]

[@KevinLynchMusic]

I had about the same number, Ron. The video only had my original music and not client ones for privacy in the video. I still have tons of work ahead of me to save it all! Best of luck.

[@artlevinesukulelepage9222]

Thanks for the helpful presentation. One question though: when you did that batch conversion to xml, how many files were there, and how long did it take? I feel like I'm getting Dorico shoved down my throat, and it's serious overkill for my purposes anyhow. Maybe I should just use their free version.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Or MuseScore! Thats another great program that’s come a long way. This demo I had about 200+ files and took 5-10 minutes. My whole system has about 1500 that’s taken about an hour to complete.

[@marcellogtv]

Thanks Kevin! What about “Convert all Finale Files to PDF with one click”? Possible? Thank you

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Video is being posted as we speak!!! Please share it with the community!!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

I wish!! Not that easy unfortunately. Lots of steps between .musx and .pdf

[@lesdeutsch9170]

Thanks Kevin. However, as a very long-time user of Finale, I have many files that predate the ones that the "Translate Folder" command finds. These are files that are from 2003 and earlier. Finale recognizes these as "Finale Legacy" files. Since Finale still opens them, they can still be converted - but it requires that I do them one-by-one. Hence, when I converted my big band compositions as a test of the "Translate Folder" command, I still had about half the charts left to convert manually. As an optimist, your advise saved me 50% of the work time - which is still very worthwhile!

[@KevinLynchMusic]

I’m glad !! I’ll post more videos as I learn stuff to help us along! I downloaded the manual (1925 pages!) to get into it all.

[@Gerry319videos]

This worked very well for my musx files but not for MUS files where I kept getting "access denied". Any idea how I can get around this?

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Where are the MUS files stored? It may have to do with your accessibility settings on your computer.

[@Gerry319videos]

@ They’re mostly in folders that have been backed up from old operating systems like Vista. Will look at the folder settings. Thanks for suggestions.

[@kthomp61]

Finale 27.4.1.146 will not open or change all/old .mus files to XML. What do I do to accomplish the conversion of all Finale files?

[@DrGroove29]

Should I assume that all of my Finale files need to be "made available offline" before performing this conversion/export? Or could that happen automatically?

[@KevinLynchMusic]

@@DrGroove29 if you have a Dropbox, then yes. But Dropbox will do this automatically when you go through the process in the video.

[@michaelmcclennan9480]

Michael Good is recommending using Compressed XML

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Was there a reason for compressed over uncompressed ?

[@michaelmcclennan9480]

@@KevinLynchMusic The compressed format contains more information(Graphics and linked parts etc). My guess it that it doesn't save 'nil' information and therefore can contain more relevant info in less space...but that's just my guess.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

Good to know!! Thank you for the tip.

[@qwertydeluxe]

Hi! If it's an option in your KZbin studio settings, can you turn on auto-captions for this video? I'd like to share this video with a Deaf composer friend. (Or if you wanted to author captions yourself, that would also be great, probably better!)

[@KevinLynchMusic]

It’s on, it may take KZbin a bit to auto generate!

[@pshimmons]

So what exactly is the difference between an musicXML file and MXL. Is it just that one is a smaller file size in the end?

[@KevinLynchMusic]

One is compressed and the other is uncompressed. Basically they contain the same information, just one is a different file size from my understanding of it.

[@pshimmons]

That’s all I’ve been able to find out as a difference also. Thanks!

[@michelrrr1]

What if you also have pdf files in this folder ?

[@KevinLynchMusic]

It will only process MUSX and MUS files. PDFs will remain untouched by Finale.

[@gak34711]

The Finale group and Greg Dell'Era should be ashamed of themselves. It was amusing to see their explanatory "your questions about Finale" in which they said categorically that Finale and Dorico are no merging. I would love to see them say categorically that Steinberg didn't pay them lots of money to a) recommend Dorico, which is an inferior copying program and b) not make Finale open source so that the community could continue to develop it for future OS's. So they gave up future authorizations. That means pretty much nothing, since in a few years, the OS's will progress past the point where Finale can be run. It's win/win for Steinberg. Steinberg is just buying their way into this market.

[@jeffevans5817]

The batch processing saves so much time! Unfortunately, I have some ancient archives that don’t have the .MUS or .MUSX extensions (a legacy of older work flows on a Mac). The batch processing doesn’t work on those ‘cause it looks for those extensions aaannd they’re missing. 😂 I have to open those one at a time. Kicking myself for not forcing the OS to write those extensions. Ah, well, it gives me something to do.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

A little everyday can help ease the burden!! Best of luck.

[@FergusJohnston]

This seems like a panic response. FInale isn't going to stop working.

[@KevinLynchMusic]

For now. I'm more interested in keeping and retaining what I've worked on for when that day happens. Finale could keep working for the next 5 years, but I don't want to take that risk with my work.