I select add new stave and pick Oboe, but it sounds like a piano. How can I fix this? any help would be much appreciated.

Yeah, I know how annoying this can be. This is what you do to fix it. Go to the "Window" menu on the top bar where the "file" menu is. Go down it and click on "Instrument List". In the instrument list you should see the oboe. If it's channel is the same as any other instrument you need to give it it's own channel by making a new instrument for it (in the instrument drop down menu). Then change its channel number to a unique channel. All you need to do then is click on the GM where it should say "1: Acoustic Grand Piano". Just scroll down and click on "oboe". It's number 69. That should do it. I just hope you don't want to rearrange your score order to be right though, that causes even more trouble.

Ahh, that helped a bit, thanks a bunch! Now I can happily continue composing :)

Anytime, I've run into most of the stupid things Finale does. For instance, try putting a tuplet at the end of the bar. That drove me cray for months and it's still an inconvenience.

New problems: One is that when I save as a .MID it only plays as piano.....

The other problem is that I try to do 2 grace notes, and have them together by a slur, and they it goes as follows: a grace note g is slured to a grace note a, and that grace note a is slurred to a whole note g. But it never carries out the whole note g, just the grace notes.

In fact, I even tried adding a third grace note as a g and slurring it with the whole note g, but it only played the g grace note, not the whole g. This is somewhat confusing to read, but anyways....anyway someone can help me?

Which version of Finale are you using and how are you saving it through the midi, as 1 channel only or seperate channels for each instrument? If you are saving it as only one channel, try saving it with seperate channels.

As for the grace note problem, I haven't run into that myself but if you could send me a copy of the file via email I may be able to help. I've tried but I can't recreate the conditions on my own Finale and still have the problem.

Edit: Yep, I checked it out and that is definitely your problem with the midi thing, although it's a nice way to make a solo piano piece without having to move everything together. I'm still not sure about the grace note problem though.