Opening Scores

When Sibelius first starts, the quick start dialog will open. This dialog allows you to open a recently used score. For further details read Starting Sibelius and the Quick Start Dialog.

If you choose “open another score” from the quick start dialog, then the quick start dialog will close, and the open dialog, which is available at any time from the score window, will appear. This is a standard open dialog like the ones found in many other programs including Microsoft Word,

In order to use this dialog properly, you should make sure that you can see the file type extensions in the list of folders. The extension is normally three or four letters with a full stop (period) immediately before it. For example, “Index.html” has the extension “html”, “Letter.doc” has the extension “doc” and “Song.mp3” has the extension “mp3”.

If you cannot see the file extensions, do the following:

  1. Open your documents folder.
  2. Press Alt+T to open the tools menu.
  3. Press the letter O to open the folder options dialog.
  4. Press Control+Tab to switch to the view page.
  5. Tab to the tree view and find the item called “Hide file extensions for known file types”.
  6. Press the space bar until this option is set to “ON”.
  7. Press the button called “Apply to All Folders”.
  8. Now press the OK button.

Sibelius scores have a file extension of “sib”, for example, Bebop.sib, and these are the files which you will be working with the most however, Sibelius can open other types of files from other scoring programs, as well as MIDI files and ASCII tab files which are used for sharing guitar music on the internet.

Opening a score

When you open a score, it may take a while to load. This is because Sibelius needs to load the playback devices and instruments that the score uses. Whilst this is happening, JAWS will repeat the word “progress”.

When the score has finished loading, JAWS will announce both the name of the score and the zoom level of that score.

The Zoom Level

The zoom level is very important. If it is too low, Sibelius will run very slowly and moving around in the score will be painful at best. The recommended zoom level is 400% or anything above that.

To learn more about using zoom levels and why it is necessary, even for totally blind users, read Zoom Levels.