I am working on a project where the wind arranger is using Finale 2007 and he is sending me the score as a music XML file.  I open it up and clean it up in Sib 5.1 which takes enough time as it is.  Then I thought I read in here that I could apply the VDL 2.5 house style (which I originally exported from the VDL 2.5 Sib 5.1 template) and all would be peachy.

I tried it and it almost works, with the exception that I am missing a lot of noteheads for the battery instruments, resulting in finky looking parts.  I have gotten around it by manually changing the noteheads, but that is not the desired method for obvious reasons.  Anyone have any ideas on this?

Let me know if I have been too vague.

I believe there is a lot of posts on this if you do a better search.  Instead of applying the house styles in the wind score, try the opposite.  Open up the VDL template with desired percussion parts and then Copy/Paste the wind parts into that score.  Give that a try.

Also, put your system specs and such in your posts or your signature, that will make it easier for anyone to help you better.

What you're describing ";should"; work, though I can't say I've spent much real time doing it that way. If you look in the House Styles menu under ";Edit Noteheads"; (in the score you've imported into), how many noteheads are you seeing? Are you saying they're present, but they just don't look correct?

Usually, I'll do what dsleath recommends which is:

1) Open Music XML score in Sibelius. Save it as ";windscore import.sib"; or something.
2) Open VDL template and add appropriate number of wind staves to the score using Create>Instruments.
2a) Do a ";save as"; to keep this handy for future projects for this same group or wind arranger. You may also save it as a ";manuscript paper.";
3) Apply rehearsal marks so you can more easily...
4) Apply any time sig changes and/or key sig changes. This will help to make sure the next step places the music as expected.
5) Copy music from wind staves in the ";import"; file, then paste it into the wind staves you've just added into your template file.
6) Look through your pasted music to verify it all looks as expected.

While you're switching between two open scores, I'd recommend temporarily putting Sibelius in a playback configuration that doesn't use any instances of KP2. This will help save time so instruments won't have to load and such. Once you're new score has wind parts properly pasted and looking good, you can go ahead and close the other score, then place Sibelius into a playback configuration that you'll be writing with.

Hope this helps.