Q: How do I select individual objects in Sibelius 7 (or Sibelius 6) without selecting everything in between? For instance, I want to just select every other note to add staccatos or select just the downbeats of every bar so I can add a bunch of accents at once?
A: Hold down the COMMAND key on Mac, or the CONTROL key in Windows and click on each note or other object to select it. Note that this same technique works with text objects, or even a combination of notes and text, or more than one type of text. You can even select notes or text objects on different staves:
With the multi-selection made, use the Sibelius Keypad to add an articulation to all of the selected notes with a single keystroke:
In this next example, I’ve selected the forte dynamic, the trill line and the crescendo hairpin in one staff. First, hold down the COMMAND key on Mac, or the CONTROL key in Windows to make the multiple selection. Once selected, if you release the key temporarily, the items will still be selected. You can then COPY these to the Clipboard (CMND-C / CTRL-C):
… At this point, you can select any discontinuous staves down the score by using the same technique as above, only this time, you will be selecting the full bar in various staves with the COMMAND key (CONTROL key) held down:
Notice that the middle staff in the example above is *not* selected. Now, when I PASTE from the Clipboard, the three different types of objects (dynamic, trill and hairpin) are all pasted, but only into the staves I’ve selected with Discontinuous Selection:
Try it! You’ll find that it’s a super fast way to paste dynamics down the score in a number of selected staves, or add articulations on selected notes all at once.
Thanks to Wayne Strange for this question.