After creating a score in Finale using the Setup Wizard, you may occasionally encounter a problem where the entire staff is displayed at an extremely reduced size.
This is one of the well-known problems with Finale that has been around for a long time, and the general solution was to reset the zoom level of the staff using the Page Layout tool.
I had never encountered this problem myself, so it remained a mystery to me for a long time, but luckily I was finally able to see it in my own environment the other day.
As a result, I discovered the following:
Once it occurs, it reproduces over and over again.
Restarting Finale doesn't resolve the issue.
When choosing another Document Style (in my case choosing Finale Maestro) it doesn't happen.
Seems like it happens only documents which have less than 4 staves such as WW trio and String Qtt. Large score such as Orchestra (String) doesn't reproduce the problem.
After closing Finale and trashing “com.makemusic.finale27.fprf” and restart Finale, the problem is resolved.
Judging from the symptoms, there seems to be a problem with the music notation format file, and perhaps deleting (rebuilding) the relevant music notation format file would be a direct solution.
(When you create an .fprf file, settings that you would want to keep, such as palette placement, will also be initialized. For details, see the separate article “General-purpose troubleshooting method: Delete (rebuild) the preference file”)
At the time, I was only thinking about finding a solution, so I regret accidentally deleting “com.makemusic.finale27.fprf” that I had thrown in the trash. However, if I am lucky enough to encounter this problem again, I would like to keep “com.makemusic.finale27.fprf” and try various things to identify the cause.