Text editing

Updated 4 years ago
This page shows old instructions for MuseScore 2.
For MuseScore 4 users, see Text editing.

    Enter/exit text edit mode

    To enter Text edit mode use one of the following methods:

    • Double click on a text element.
    • Right-click on a text element and select Edit element.
    • Click on a text element and press Ctrl+E (Mac: Cmd+E).

    Sample text in edit mode

    In this mode you can apply formatting to individual characters, including options such as bold, italic, underline, subscript, superscript, font family and font size. These are accessed from the Text toolbar below the document window:

    Text toolbar

    To exit Text edit mode use one of the following:

    • Press Esc.
    • Click on a part of the score outside the edit window.

    Keyboard shortcuts

    In Text edit mode, the following keyboard shortcuts are available:

    • Ctrl+B (Mac: +B) toggles bold face.
    • Ctrl+I (Mac: +I) toggles italic.
    • Ctrl+U (Mac: +U) toggles underline.
    • Home End moves cursor.
    • Backspace (Mac: Delete) removes character to the left of the cursor.
    • Del (Mac: → Delete or fn+Delete) removes character to the right of the cursor.
    • starts new line.
    • F2 (Mac: fn+F2) Inserts special characters (see below).

    Symbols and special characters

    You can use the Special Characters window to insert quarter notes, fractions, and many other kinds of special symbols or characters into your text. A few symbols can also be accessed by shortcut (see below).

    The Special Characters palette contains buttons for inserting symbols into the text (e.g. quarter note), or special characters (e.g. copyright symbol, ©)

    To open Special Characters, use any of the following methods:

    • Click on the keyboard icon in the text toolbar (below the score window).
    • Press F2 (Mac: fn+F2).

    Note: (1) This only works in Text edit mode; (2) The Special Characters dialog should not be confused with the menu item of the same name in the macOS version of MuseScore.

    The dialog is divided into 3 tabs: Common symbols, musical symbols and unicode symbols. The musical and unicode tabs are further subdivided into alphabetically-arranged categories.

    Double-clicking an item in the Special Characters dialog immediately adds it to the text where the cursor is positioned. Multiple items can be applied without closing the dialog box, and the user can even continue to type normally, delete characters, enter numerical character codes etc., with it open.

    Special character shortcuts

    In Text edit mode the following keyboard shortcuts can be used to access certain special characters:

    Ctrl+Shift+B: Flat.
    Ctrl+Shift+F: Forte.
    Ctrl+Shift+H: Natural.
    Ctrl+Shift+M: Mezzo.
    Ctrl+Shift+N: Niente.
    Ctrl+Shift+P: Piano (dynamic mark).
    Ctrl+Shift+R: Rinforzando.
    Ctrl+Shift+S: Sforzando.
    Ctrl+Shift+Z: Z.
    Ctrl+Shift+#: Sharp.

    See also

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