In this guest post, Sibelius plug-in guru Bob Zawalich describes several of the plug-ins he has written to make navigating around long scores quicker and easier.
Several downloadable plug-ins that make it easier to navigate in a score are available to Sibelius 6 and 7. Find these on the plug-in download page in the Navigation category.
Bookmark lets you add, delete, and go to hidden text objects, hitpoints, or comments, any of which can function as bookmarks. The bookmark will stay at the same location when music is added, deleted, or reformatted.
Text bookmarks are text objects in Tiny text style, and all start with “~bmk”; they will not print.
To add a bookmark, type a new name in the edit box, and click Add. The dialog will then close.
To delete or go to, you can type the name you want, or you can choose it from the list containing all the bookmarks of the chosen type in the score. The Go To button will bring the bookmark location into view without closing the dialog, so you can browse among the bookmarks until you find what you want.
The hit point and comments options can be especially useful if you already have these in your score.
Go To lets you navigate to a number of different types of objects. By default it will go to Rehearsal Marks so you can just type a Rehearsal Mark name and choose Go To.
As with Bookmark, you can type in the name of your destination or choose it from a list. When you choose a destination from the list, that location will be moved into view, so you can also browse in this plug-in.
There are a number of options besides Rehearsal marks. Special barline can take you to section breaks; Dynamics can get you to the next loud section. Selected objects lets you check out all the items in a non-passage selection.
Go To Text lets you go to the next or previous piece of staff text, in any text style, relative to the current selection. You can run it with no selection to change search direction. This plug-in lets you type arbitrary text to use as bookmarks (hidden text starting with ~ is recommended, such as ~1, ~2, ~3 for easy to enter bookmarks). This is a simpler bookmark mechanism than the Bookmark plug-in; you can enter any text to act as a bookmark, and use the plug-in to find it.
Go To Comments gives a list of available comments and lets you navigate to one. This is a simplification of the Bookmark plug-in’s Comment feature. You cannot add or delete comments, but you might find it easier to use than Bookmark for navigation with comments.
These plug-ins are available from the Sibelius plug-in download page, in the Navigation category, which includes instructions for their installation. In Sibelius 7, you can install them from the File tab via Plug-ins > Install Plug-ins.