Deleting a score

• Apr 26, 2024 - 21:31

I Googled how to delete a score in Musescore and it indicated to go to the dots at the right hand corner of the score and pull down the menu, etc. HOWEVER, I don't have those dots. So how do I erase old scores I don't need nor want???

Thanks!


Comments

Depends on which version of MuseScore you have and what your OS is.

Also, do you want to delete the file from your hard drive? Or to remove the score from the list of scores on the Home tab in MuseScore? Or what? These are different actions that have radically different outcomes.

In reply to by rpoplinger

To remove the files from your hard drive, you must use the File Explorer. (That's what it's called in Windows; it has a different name in MacOS and I don't know that other name ... but it's the program you use to look at files and folders saved on your computer.) Simply browse to the folder where the file in question is stored and delete it from the hard drive.

To remove the link from the MuseScore window, I have been told that Mac has a command to clear the list. (This menu option is not available on Windows, so I don't know exactly what it's called.) Click on File / Open recent and slide down the list to the end. You should have an option there to clear the list / clear recent / something along that line. This will delete the entire list (!!!) so be sure you know where to find the files you want to be able to access on your hard drive.

Good luck!!!

In reply to by TheHutch

In macOS the Windows Explorer equivalent is called 'Finder'. One major difference between the two O/S's - in the macOS world Finder is always running, you don't need to start it, although you can click the Finder icon in your taskbar to bring it to the forefront so you can manage your files. Also, the 'recent' files in both MS4 and Finder are not links (that's a different type of file in both Windows and macOS, more like an address to a property, rather than the property itself). 'Recent' files are just a list of the last things you opened.

In reply to by Lofo

That is EXACTLY how the File Explorer works in Windows. It is always running (indeed, it is a basic part of the OS), but you have to "open" it to view and use it.

Don't know about the recent files in the Finder (though I suspect you are mistaken, I don't know it to be true), but you definitely are mistaken in MuS4. The entries in the list on the Scores page, on the Home tab are links. If it were merely a list of files, clicking on them would not open the file. Each entry in that list is a link that opens the file when you click on it. That's what a "link" is.

In reply to by TheHutch

In Windows, even the desktop view is a running instance of the Explorer. And when you kill the Explorer in the Task Manager, it is automatically restarted. And the desktop dissapears for a short moment.

But Lofo is not wrong. Links in the Windows operating system have a special file type (*.lnk) and behave differently from almost all other files. And they contain more than just the address of the file they point to.

But in MuseScore 4, it's just the text file C:\Users\{youruseraccount}\AppData\Local\MuseScore\MuseScore4\recent_files.json, which contains a list of the full paths to the scores you've recently opened.

Yes, it behaves like a link under Windows (and probably also under MacOS) and I also use the term "link" in this context for the sake of simplicity.
So not all 'links' are the same :-)

In reply to by TheHutch

'Links' on both Windows and macOS refer to special files, not application 'Recent Files'. 'Recent files' (in your File-Open menu) end up as a pure list in a single file per app somewhere, and the key is they are handled by the app alone (via standard OS libraries), not the OS. Clicking on the 'list of files' in this case does in fact open the file, even though they are not links, and have less functionality (you can do interesting things with link files in both OSs.)

In reply to by Lofo

Which is exactly what I said.

The "interesting things" you can do with actual .lnk files aren't really that interesting. For all practical purposes, link files on the Windows Desktop (or whatever the equivalent is called on a Mac), links in a Recent Files list, and links on a web page are, in fact, different things. But they all do the same thing: they open a file somewhere.

What I was pointing out is that deleting the filenames from the .JSON file that feeds MuS 4's Recent Files list does not do anything to the actual file sitting on the hard drive. I was pointing this out because this is an idea that many users do not understand.

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