<p>S2's laptop has issued the black screen of death. H was able to pull the files off, but says the motherboard is shot. Now S2 is debating whether it's time to move from PC to Mac. We live in a divided family; H likes the lower price and availability of software for PCs. Plus, he knows how to work on them.</p>
<p>D loves her Mac. S1 has both. He also knows how to work on PCs, but says the nice thing about Macs is that they don't need worked on! (I just try to stay out of it all.)</p>
<p>But S2 is probably leaning toward a Mac. He wants to know if he loads Finale on a Mac, will it be able to read Finale files he created on a PC? Seems like the answer would be yes, since Finale is made to load on either type of computer. But he said it may be a deal killer if a Mac can't read the files he's already created.</p>
<p>Daughter uses Finale on her Mac and I use it on my PC. We have never had problems sharing files, but what I cannot remember is whether one or another of us had to save in some format other than the default. Unfortunately, she has already returned to school so I cannot do a quick experiment for you. If you still have Finale on another PC somewhere, you would be able to convert if necessary. If you do not then you could download the demo version from Finale</a> Demo to one of the Macs. It is virtually the same as the production version except that you cannot save, it prints only the first page of a piece with an obnoxious waterstamp on it, and it will not let you use some of the digitized instrument voices. If you can load the recovered PC files with the Mac demo version, then you are all set.</p>
<p>If they do buy a new copy for the Mac, I believe they can do a "crossgrade" in which they upgrade to the latest version on the other platform reasonably cheaply, or they can purchase the academic version for a lot less than the regular version.</p>
<p>If you are still having trouble determining the answer to this question (e.g. you do not yet have a Mac on which to download the demo version,) let me know. I can take a Finale file that was created on my PC and saved in the standard format, email it to my daughter and ask her whether or not it will open on her Mac.</p>
<p>OK, I finally found the answer I was looking for. Since version 3.7, Finale files created on a PC will open directly on a Mac as long as the Mac has the same or later version of Finale as the one used to save the file in the first place. Before that, there was a format called ENIGMA Transportable File (ETF) that had to be used. The memory I had of possibly having to save in that format is from the distant past so unless these kids were using Finale over ten years ago, there is not going to be a compatibility problem as long as you get the most recent version for the Mac and have some way to transfer the files recovered from the PC to the Mac.</p>
<p>Wonderful, thank you! I will share these answers with S2. </p>
<p>I don't know the details enough to answer your questions. We have an "extra" computer (was my D's before she got her Mac laptop) that my H uses to recover stuff from broken computers. He was able to save everything off S's laptop. Plus, S2 may have extra copies of everything at school. (I think he said he did.) His Finale discs are at school, too, so downloading the trial on D's Mac is an inspired idea (although BassDad's last post sounds like we don't even need to do that!)</p>
<p>You actually should not have to but, being a belt and suspenders kind of guy when it comes to computers, downloading the demo to the Mac would still be a good idea. Why depend on third-hand information that is very likely to be correct when you can easily get first-hand information that will definitely be correct?</p>