Choral Public Domain Library

How do I open these? Many MANY files on this site are in this format, including some Brahms Lied i wanted to do transposed down a couple of steps. I have Finale Printmusic 2010 and Sibelius 7, but neither seems to want to open these... TT_TT

Hello, are you sure the files you saw were .ETL? I couldn't find any example of such file on Brahms' page. http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Finale uses a similiar extension called .ETF

Apparently ETF files were intended by Finale to make these files transferable, but the format is no longer supported. Don't ask me why.
If you want to open an older ETF file, you need an old Finale version. It looks that all the ETF files in CPDL will soon become obsolete.
Unless someone volunteers to save these files in another format (MUS or MusicXML)...
For more information, see: http://www.finaleforum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7538

Enigma Transportable Files (.ETF) can be opened in any full version of Finale ... I just opened such a file from the Brahms page in Finale 2012. Finale's PrintMusic is restricted to opening .MUS files and does not support the .ETF format.

Unfortunately, since many (most?) of the .ETF files at CPDL have been zipped (.ZIP) to conserve file space, it is a little difficult to track down .ETF files. I've noticed so far that many such files have been linked as "Finale 1998" files (and probably also as "Finale 1999" or "Finale 2000" files). So that's a starting point.

Whether to open such files in a full-fledged Finale version and resave them as .MUS files or to export them as MusicXML files is a question - possibly both. In either (or both) cases, the source file designation(s) should be changed to reflect the new format(s).

What do others think? It would be helpful to have some consensus before launching into updating .ETF files.

Thanks for your reply.
You described exactly the way I used to open ETF files. However, they are no longer supported in Finale 2012. The message is: "Invalid file type". The ETF extension is also 'unknown' in the Help function.
Is there another way to export them to MusicXML or MUS?

From this forum:

Due to a bug, Finale 2012 can't open ETF files, but Finale 2012a can open ETF files.
The 2012a Finale maintenance update was released today (2011-12-22).

hdeneve, did you try to install the latest maintanance update?

Max

The initial Finale 2012 did have a bug that caused .ETF to be an invalid file type. It was fixed in the (free) maintenance upgrades Finale 2012a, Finale 2012b, Finale 2012c (which is the most recent, I believe). If you have any version of Finale 2012 before 2012c, you should go to the Finale website and obtain the free maintenance upgrade.