I need to know if there is a way to beam 6 or 7 notes as a triplet would be beamed, with the beamed number of notes below just like a triplet and have the notes play within 1 beat like a triplet.
The short answer is "no." There are some ways to make it happen, but they all involve fiddling with some notation and hiding other notation. See, e.g., Warren Porter's discussion of it here (https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=2326.0). Or search the forum for the term "tuplets."
For an example of 7 to a beat, take a look at historie.html (http://nwc-scriptorium.org/db/classical/t/tirihist.html) in the 81st measure. There is a temporary change of tempo for that beat and other staves will have extra notes or rests to fill out that beat. William has already pointed you in the right direction (Thanks!), but also look at the links near the bottom, especially n-tuplets vs m-tuplets.
While you can beam six notes, it might be possible to just flag those notes as triplets and not have to mess with a workaround which would involve all staves.
HTH
Right, but that doesn't work for 7 notes. Thanks all for your help! Seems to be something that would be great for the next NWC version!!
I don't understand why you say that this doesn't work for 7 notes. It
is for 7 notes. There are 7 sixteenths in the space of one beat, the space where 4 sixteenths would, without tuplets, exist.
Like Richard said, it
is for 7 notes, I was just saying if you only had
six notes you would not need the workaround if triplets would be OK. Take a look at that historie example again and unhide the "hidden" group to see how it works. This file was created as a tutorial on pentuplets: t7665w01.nwc (http://www.wjporter.com/nwc/nwc2/t7665w01.nwc) for use in my Pentuplets.htm (http://www.wjporter.com/nwc/Pentuplets.htm) page, but it can handle groupings other than five.