Tip #20 - Use (Exessively) Large Print Size to Maximize Size on Printouts

When you are about to print a score MusEdit checks how well your music will fit on a sheet of paper before beginning the printing. If it turns out that your score will be too wide to fit on a single page at the printout size you specified, MusEdit will present a "Size Alert" dialog to let you know about this situation and will present alternative print size options which will allow your music to fit on a single page width.

If you routinely like to print your music at the largest size which will allow it to fit on a single page (in width) you can take advantage of MusEdit's "Size Alert" feature to automatically scale the printout for you. To do this, set the printout size to a number which you know will be too big, thereby forcing the Size Alert to calculate the optimum size for you. There are two ways you can do this:

-for a given file select File|Print Options and set the print size to something you know will be excessive (200% perhaps) and then when you do the printout (or Print Preview) the size alert dialog will allow you to automatically resize the score.

-use File|Set Preferences to set the default printout size for all new documents to 200%. Then when you go to print any new score you've created the size will already be set large and you may get the Size Alert to show up automatically.

If you like to show "page breaks" on your score (an option you can check on the File|Print Options dialog) you'll see dashed lines indicating where the pages will be broken up during printout. When you are working on a new document set to "excessively" large printout size these dashed lines will cut through the middle of your score. Don't be alarmed though, because once the Size Alert re-scales the printout size these dashed lines should no longer cut through your score.

Also, if you are intentionally printing music which is going to be quite huge (eg. for teaching) you may well expect the music to spill onto two or more pages in width, in which case you don't want the Size Alert to tell you about this situation every time you attempt to print. In this case you will probably want to turn off "Size Alert" for this particular score, and you can accomplish that via File|Print Options.

(Thanks to Ray Langley, who first suggested this technique)

  Yowza Software, P.O. Box 4275, Berkeley  CA  94704  USA 800-234-0427