Finale Conversion to Sibelius / Dorico / MusicXML

If you’re not the sort of person who spends their time keeping up with the latest news in music software, you may not have heard about the demise of Finale, one of the industry’s leading scorewriters. Finale’s parent company MakeMusic discontinued technical support in August 2025, which puts it on the inevitable path to obsolescence. It still functions for now, but little bugs and glitches will compound with every OS update until it eventually stops working altogether.

Sure, there are workarounds; you could choose to never update your computer, but this will leave you increasingly exposed to security vulnerabilities. Some die-hard Finale users have set up a dedicated “air-gapped” computer specifically for deprecated software like Finale. It’s an alright solution (though a bit inconvenient) but it’s worth considering that it’s a financial investment that offsets the need for a time investment in learning a new software.

Whether you want to stick with trusty Finale or make the switch to a different software, it’s going to require some sort of investment. This means that if you are still using Finale in 2026 – especially an older version than v27 – the time has come to seriously consider making the switch. We’ve worked with many composers, so we know how busy you can be, and how often composers are not positioned to shake up their entire workflow on short notice.

This is when a music copyist can be a lifesaver; the ép team will continue to offer music engraving services in Finale (version 2012 through to v27) for the foreseeable future. With any music engraving project, are also happy to convert your Finale file to Sibelius or Dorico at no extra charge. We can offer this add-on service for free because the time it takes to clean up and proofread the converted file is completely offset by the efficiency gains of using newer software.

How it works

When we receive a Finale score from a composer, the first thing we do is export the score in PDF format. Since Finale can be buggy and unpredictable, this PDF serves as a reference to make sure no details are lost in the engraving process. Next, we ask the composer whether they specifically want us to engrave the score in Finale (i.e., one of the deliverables will be a Finale file) or if they are okay with us converting it to another format. There is no difference in cost either way, but we understand some composers like to have their files in a specific format for practical (or perhaps sentimental) reasons.

Unfortunately, it is (and always will be) impossible to open Finale files directly in a competing softwares. Finale, Sibelius and Dorico simply input and output different data; it would be like asking a Portuguese speaker to write an essay in Japanese. MusicXML is a lossy interchange format designed specifically to capture music notation in a way that is near-universally understood by music software. It is currently the best way to move music notation from one software to another, and it accomplishes it at about 80-90% accuracy – much faster than re-notating the entire file from scratch – but it does lose some detail. Layout considerations, fine-tuned graphical elements, and text tend to not survive the journey.

Most composers we work with accept our proposal to convert the file. This means the next step is to compare the newly converted file to the PDF copy we generated at the beginning of the process, measure by measure. We check for anything that is missing or out of alignment – sometimes it’s a small detail like a crescendo or a staccato mark, other times it’s an important tempo change or even an entire instrument. From this point, the file is successfully converted, and we continue with our typical music copying workflow to create a clean, professional final product. That initial proofreading pass is the most time-consuming part of the process, but it makes the rest of the engraving process easier.

If you have any questions about Finale conversion, please reach out. We pride ourselves on being experts in music notation software and can help you navigate the nitty-gritty technical details so you can focus on music-making.