Difficulty reading Musescore 3 file created on Macbook in Windows
Hello Musescore Users,
I would be much obliged if anyone could assist me with an issue that I just can't seem to solve. I am collaborating with someone overseas (we're in different countries) on a music project which requires each of us to work independently on a MuseScore file. We complete our respective contributions before emailing it to the other party.
I suspect that the issue I am going to describe is created when the original file is generated by my collaboration partner on a 64bit Windows based computer however, when I receive the file via email, I open it on a 32bit Apple Macbook. Now when I open the file, I can do this successfully. The difficulty arises when I have finished my input into the Musescore file and I email it back, the originator cannot successfully open the file as a musescore file. He informs me that the file opens as a Crescendo file? We have tried various things to work around this however, nothing has worked thus far.
As I mentioned, I suspect that this may have something to do with the different systems ie Windows vs Apple as well as 64 bit vs 32bit but I cannot be sure. Please could anyone who is savvy in these sorts of issues let me know if you have any suggestions to overcome the issue so that the originator can read the file as a musescore file on its return.
Many thanks Ron
Comments
32bit Apple Macbook???? Those went out of fashion and support more than a decade ago as far as I can tell. IIRC MuseScore 1 was the last to support those
As long as both of you use the same (major) version of MuseScore there should be no problem in exchanging MuseScore (mscz, mscx) files, otherwise MusicXML whould be the way to got (to the downrev version)
Thank you for your comment. I think perhaps I wasn't clear in my description so let me elaborate that I was referring to the various operating systems on each computer, NOT the computer itself. As it turns out, for those who read this article seeking a solution to a similar issue, I have discovered that I was receiving a .mscx file generated from the Microsoft / Windows OS while my Apple laptop automatically selects .mscz for some unknown reason. I had not noticed this when saving the file to email however, after going through the trail of events in fine detail, this came to light. I generated a new file with the .mscx file name attached and it worked first time. I hope this helps someone else who may experience a similar issue.
In reply to Thank you for your comment… by Ron52
In general, you shouldn't be using MSCX unless you have a very specific reason to *and I think that format will be going away in the future). MSCZ is the default and preferred format for all versions of MuseScore and all operating systems. But, if you do create an MSCX file, it should work on all other operating systems. So probably something else was going to cause a the problem you were seeing.
In reply to Thank you for your comment… by Ron52
Both, mscx and mscz, do work across platforms. Thee former though would would loose images and, as Marc said is not recommended and will probably go away or work differently in MuseScore 4.
It also wastes space and bandwidth when sending to others.
Thank you Marc and JoJo - both useful guidance for the future
In reply to Thank you Marc and JoJo -… by Ron52
An mscz file is basically a ZIP archive containing the mscx, the thumbnail and optionally also images. In MuseScore 4 it'll contain more, but still is a ZIP archive and as such much smaller than the mscx (which is a plain text file really)
Thanks Jojo. My collaboration partner and I have taken your and Marc's advice on board and will be applying this moving forward. Thank you to both of you for your input - its been very helpful.