i was able to "hide" the empty staves in a system which meant they appeared grayed out when working but when i saved and exported the file the empty staves all appeared in the score! it seems "hidden" means only when working on the score.
i want to know how to delete the empty staves without deleted the other staves in the system so that they don't appear in the saved and exported version.
i am not skilled so please answer in a step by step way with no abbreviations.
Ufortunately that wont work because the piece is in 6 sections, and the instruments appear in multiple sections but not all. if i deleted the instruments that would delete the staves where they have notes!
>>i was able to "hide" the empty staves in a system which meant they appeared grayed out when working
"Greyed out" indicates you only hid the music, not the staves. Use the Hide Empty Staves function after learning how it works. It will hide empty staves and they won't appear in saved or exported versions. If a stave has material on it, but that material itself is hidden ("greyed out") it is treated as "empty" and Hide Empty Staves will work on it as the second step. You might be confusing the two, and only doing the first step. When Hide Empty Staves operates, it does not "grey out" material but rather the staves themselves disappear from view and will not be printed either.
sorry, when i replied, your message had not appeared so it was a reply to the preceding message.
When i clicked hide empty staves what happened was that the whole note rests in those staves appeared gray. i did not see or do i know anything about a 'second step" nor is it clear from what you mention what it is. What is that and where did you see it?
If the staves are not disappearing when you use Hide Empty Staves then something in them (object(s)) is not hidden first (greyed), and so they are not "empty". That's if you are really using "Hide Empty Staves" (I suspect not: see below)
Step 1: "Hide" (objects) = makes the objects invisible, or greyed out (if "View Invisible Objects" is on, as seems to be your case). The DOES NOT hide the staves!
Step 2: Select Staves with all objects on stave hidden, and invoke the Hide Empty Staves function.
Step 2 will not work unless all object on the stave are hidden as in Step 1.
"When i clicked hide empty staves what happened was that the whole note rests in those staves appeared gray".
That is NOT what happens when using Hide Empty Staves. It is what happens when using "Hide". So you must have used "Hide" (Step 1) not "Hide Empty Staves (Step 2).
Actually if staves contain ONLY bar rests (not "whole note rests" as you call them) you do not need to hide them as in step 1. Bar rests alone on a stave count as already empty.
I can't get more detailed than that. Please study the Reference.
The downloadable plugin Hide Staves And Music can be useful here. If you choose to Hide All Staff Objects and Hide Empty Staves, it will apply those features to all selected bars. To use Hide Empty Staves you will need Sibelius 7.1.3 or later.
Hide Empty Staves only works on full systems, so if is best to select full systems, though you can certain hide the staff objects in part of a system if you choose; that system will be not hidden in Hide Empty Staves.
thanks everyone for your efforts to help. to be clear, the only thing i used was the HiDE on the HIDE OR SHOW on the ribbon on the top. i could not find any other way to delete only certain staves of only some systems in the score.
i did not see the HIDE EMPTY STAVES option. My question now is if i use he HIDE EMPTY STAVES option and hide only those staves in those systems, will they not appear when saved and printed out, which is what i want to achieve?
Lastly, i do not see what advantage there would be to using the Plug In if using just HIDE EMPTY
STAVES would accomplish my objective.
Robin has told you where to find Hide Empty Staves. I see my suspicion that you were not actually using Hide Empty Staves was true, even though you had misleadingly told us you had used it.
If you use (the true) Hide Empty Staves, they will not appear when saved or printed out.
For the future: sometimes you have to dig a little deeper. There is the option of looking up the Reference or Find in Ribbon. Worthwhile tools to use. Not everything is obvious at a glance in a complex program like Sibelius. You can't expect to navigate your way around the program by instinct alone. If you make a habit of looking up the Reference, or Find in Ribbon, you will save many questions about such basic things here.
>>" i could not find any other way to delete only certain staves of only some systems in the score."
Note: the staves are not "deleted" with Hide Empty Staves. They are just hidden, as the name of the action implies. You can show them again should you wish to, but they won't show themselves again in any context without your permission.
>Lastly, i do not see what advantage there would be to using the Plug In if using just HIDE EMPTY
STAVES would accomplish my objective
If you have music in your staves, Hide Empty Staves will do nothing, because the staves are not empty.
You can indeed, hide all the objects in your staves, and then use Hide Empty Staves to hide the staves.
You can instead run the plugin Hide Staves and Music while there is still music in the staves. It will first hide the music and then Hide hide the now empty staves. It saves a few steps, so if you do this operation a lot, the plugin can be useful.
As always, Bob's wonderful plugins streamline things.
But the OP should know first where the functions involved actually are. He didn't, and thought he was using Hide Empty Staves when he was only using Hide. As such, the plugin would be a distraction at that point at least.
I think the best use of Bob's plugins is to streamline stuff that you already understand, not to replace understanding of basic program functionality.
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