My thanks to everyone who's replied; I gather then that Noteworthy out-of-the-box can't be expected to get this feature right. I'm astonished that this explicit error in grouping the notes and applying the beams can be present in any self-respecting music program.
I don't have a degree in music theory but I'm confident the rational behind the rule is, as explained before, that it should be possible to point to one or other note symbol in the score which denotes where each principal beat starts. For 4:4 time the beat is a crotchet, for 2:2 a minim. For compound times the beat is a dotted something. For 6:8 it's a dotted crotchet. European music can have more complex rhythms e.g. 7:8, which can be (for example) [crotchet crotchet dotted-crotchet] in each bar - or other patterns.
So basically a 4:4 time tune should show where each of the 4 crotchet beats start. In a synchopated piece this might require a crotchet to be divided into 2 tied quavers, so that the visual position of the 2nd quaver can be physically seen. In 6:8 the position of each dotted crotchet beat should be directly visible. So in my early example of a minim followed by a crotchet, you should write the minim as dotted crotchet tied to following quaver (of the same note) since the quaver is the start of the second (dotted crotchet length) beat.
This rule doesn't apply if a single note represents two or more whole beats. So a single note occupying a bar of 6:8 can be shown as a dotted minim, even though the second beat is now hidden (halfway through that minim). I assume the reason behind this is because performing musicians don't need to know where the second beat is, because when it arrives they don't do anything except hold the existing note. And this is all because the format of the notation has evolved first-and-foremost to make the job of the performer as easy and error-free as possible.
As a performing musician myself, I would be very pleased to learn about a tool which could be applied to existing Noteworthy scores to detect and correct this oversight. Even just to list where the errors occur would be a help. Better still of course would be a revision to Noteworthy so that it obeys the rules which every music student knows.
Mike - given that the result display of MIDI import is a 'minim followed by crotchet', Noteworthy is obviously making good assumptions about the intended note lengths. My concern is that a proper score-writer would make clear where the compound beats are - i.e you should be able to point on the screen to an object representing the start position of each dotted crotchet (which is the principal beat). Writing it as minim followed by crotchet 'hides' the second beat inside the minim, whereas writing it as 'dotted crotchet tied to quaver, then crotchet' allows you to see very quickly that the second beat starts on the quaver.
Music notation has been developed over many centuries primarily to be of maximum help to performing musicians - as you'd expect - and the inability to put one's eye on a graphic object (i.e. a note) which is where the beats fall is a serious failing. I would be astonished if Noteworthy had been designed to fail to deliver such a valuable aid to performing musicians - but I can't find how to get it to respect this standard rule of music notation.
For non-compound time such as 2:2 it all works perfectly.
I manually make a Noteworthy file comprising a minim then a crotchet, in a 6:8 time signature. This should strictly be shown as a dotted crotchet tied to a following quaver at the same pitch, then the crotchet, but I do it wrongly by hand. Then I export it as a MIDI file. NOTE THAT this will comprise only the time signature and note lengths and pitches. No direct beaming information will be contained in the MIDI file. When I import the MIDI file again, using 'detect compound time' where appropriate, Noteworthy still shows it as a minim plus a crotchet. This is fundamentally wrong. Obviously I can edit the file and correct it by hand, but then I could have written the music score with a quill if I had wanted; doing it automatically is why I bought Noteworthy. Importing other files from other sources demonstrates the same problem. Is there a way I can persuade Noteworthy to follow the established rules of music notation - or is that an expectation too far?
Thanks for these answers. I see now that I posed the wrong question. Lawrie's solution works if you've just done a move. What I meant to ask was how to correct the problem if I've just done a transpose. Then I find (and I've checked it just now) that some ties may be wrong, but a stem-direction audit does not fix the problem. It does correct the stem directions but the ties may remain wrong.
However this messing around has allowed me to find an answer - perhaps of use to someone else in the big Noteworthy world out there. If you select the whole staff (perhaps excepting clef, key and time-signatures) and move the whole lot up one position and back down a position - viola! The tie directions audit themselves.
Sometimes I take a tune written in the treble clef and 'move' the notes up or down the staff so that they read correctly (obviously at a different octave) in the new bass clef once I have also changed the treble clef symbol to a bass clef syymbol. I observe that any ties between notes do not automatically change from 'going up' to 'going down' or vice versa as might be needed given that the notes have change position on the staff. I can rememdy this by removing each tie and replacing it, one at a time, but this is of course time consuming. Is there a 'audit tie direction' command I can invoke which will do this for me?
