Elke thank you. I have removed the expression marks and it does clean up the staves. I have kept the articulations on the bowline notes for now. I assume you remove those, too.

I have one tie that perplexes me. It is a half note tied to a 16th note. There seems no way to reduce that, so do I just keep that tie in the bowline as is?

Just a few thoughts as I finish this..

-All my expression marks were copied into the bowline. I think it might help to have them there as well.

-As you progress through Suzuki more and more shifting is offered. My bowline may reflect a different open string than someone else's choice if they choose to stay in 1st position. They can then modify the bow line source file. Am I correct?

-Do you generally place all possible fingers above and below the stave that are marked in the score? I just indicate the ones above for the shifts, but I guess I could place a text box below for the other fingering choice, but then the bowline would not reflect which one I chose.

-I assume all slurred are changed to one note value to avoid the pulsing bow?

To reduce the bowline: do a right mouse click somewhere on that stave and select "stave properties" or something the like (I use a German version, don't know what it says in English...). In the first block of the dialog box the fourth entry from the top is something like "Scale". This is where you change this. The bowline template has this set at 75%, but the other day I when I worked on the Bach Adagio I was tight on space and made it 65% - it still works well like that. 

I have not been consistent with the bowline file with an empty bowline. This was meant so people could download the PDF file and work on their own bowline manually. I did this because I realized what a treasure it is to even prepare a bowline. As you mentioned, one discovers the piece on a different level when one has to think about all these details. When you actually do the bowline you start thinking differently about bow rhythm, and the difference between the rhythm of the melody and what the bow arm has to do starts staring you in the face. But I wonder whether anyone has used these files. My guess is that most people just look for a filled in bowline file. And for a longer piece like this I would definitely also go for the ready made file if there was one... 

But if you still want to do the empty bowline file: Click on a pause in the bowline, right mouse click, Select, All similar elements in the same stave, F8 (to start the Inspector), take the check mark off from Visible. That way you only have the empty measures for people to write in without pauses cluttering the stave.  

Thank you so much for notes and tips, they are exactly what I needed. I went ahead early today and started a from scratch file (lost all my work from yesterday because I used an existing file and it somehow got corrupted), and just finished my piece minus the bow line entries. I notice that on the Resources page there is one w/o bow line, so I will save this one out w/o bow line and save another with bowline added. Tomorrow I will add the bowline. My bowline, since not from your template, is not reduced in size, but I started before you sent it- I would like to use yours for the next piece. Wow this is very surprising- there were so many articulation and dynamic markings my piece (seemed like a hundred of them!) that I did not even notice before. Entering this was worth it just for that alone. I learned so much about my piece on a whole other level with that and putting it in note by note, but the entry from other files will come in handy later.

Hi Beth, I literally have been carrying a flaw in my bow arm with fast string crossings since I started with the violin, and it cropped up trying to play fast fiddle songs at 2 years in on my old ensemble group, and then again last Christmas with difficult baroque tempos. It wasn't until this 4th piece that I ran into it with Suzuki books. I literally cannot play the piece solidly  above 63bpm right now. I am completely blocked with no where to go. Exercises and practice strategies have not worked for me for some reason. Even doing the bow line on the fly did not help. I am in my 3rd month on this piece! I am excited to see if the bowline helps me to finally overcome this crooked bowing/stiff arm/using too much bow on string crossings. I will let everyone know what happens when I get to it later this week. If it does, I will never play another piece w/o creating a bowline document or using someone else's to practice. 6-10 hours of data entry versus 3 months of practice is a huge difference in effort! I just can hardly wait...

The easiest way to get from an orchestral piece down to just one line is in Edit-Instruments. You can just delete the ones you don't need. At the same place you would add an instrument, that is a stave. 

And a note on pickup measures: Sometimes you have something similar in the middle of a piece, like when you need to have a key change in the middle of a measure (see for example measure 26 of the Becker Gavotte, where the key signature changes). Do a right mouse click on the measure - upps, I just notice: I have the German version... Well, it is the last thing that appears on the context menu. Should say something like "measure properties". In the dialog box that appears you can set it how many beats this specific measure actually is. You do the same for the measure after the repeat sign. And for one of them you then choose (in the same dialog box) NOT to count that measure. Otherwise your overall count will be off. 

Oh, and another little thing I think I did not mention about the note entry: up and down arrow raise/lower the note value a half step.