Our show's writer only uses Finale and I've opened .etf files in Sibelius before, but this time I get a fatal error.  The composer said that Finale 2007 can't save .etf files.  He sent me .etf and .ftm files, though.  Neither will open in Sibelius.  Any suggestions?

He can save them as [b]Music XML[/b] files in Finale, which you should be able to open in Sibelius. Overall this format seems to be much more reliable that .etf, however depending on what he's writing, there may still be a fair amount of manual tweaking that you'd need to do in Sibelius.

Ditto, that. Music XML is WAY better than etf.'s were.

I've been working this way with several arrangers and have yet to run into any problems. Even the tweaking you have to do to make the file look good, is pretty easy and not all that time consuming.

Thank you, Sibelius!

I third the decision to use Music XML.  This is, I agree, way more reliable when moving between programs like this.  Finale 2007 only offers the OPENING of etf files.  Saving of ETF files was dropped in favor of Music XML starting with Finale 2007.