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Participant
January 31, 2024
Answered

Endnotes refuse to reorder

  • January 31, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 3397 views

I accidentally deleted an endnote, no 67, in a book I'm working on. I have tried to reinsert it on the original page in the text and to get all the subsequent endnotes to reorder, but every time I do this it stubbornly goes right to the end of the endnotes, no 131, and also appears as 131 in the text. This is driving me mad, and I'm frightened of messing up all the endnotes in the book. If anyone can suggest how I resolve this I would be most grateful!

Tom.

Correct answer Tom25430080215k

Many thanks, Barb and James for these suggestions, which may well be useful to me in the future. I tried them without success, however, and was just about tearing my hair out, as I thought I was going to have to strip out all the endnotes and reinsert them one by one. Then I discovered that the problem was not Indesign's endnote feature but entirely my own stupid fault. At some point (trying to resize some pictures) I had cut the bit of text containing note 67, then repasted it into a new text box which was independent of the rest of the text in the book. I had forgotten this when I noticed note 67 was missing. So every time I was reinserting the note, Indesign treated it as a note on a separate bit of text unrelated to the rest of the text and notes in the book. The solution was to cut the rogue piece of text again and paste it into the main text of the book and then note 67 could be inserted in its correct order. I am posting this not so as to parade my own incompetence, but in the hope that if anyone else makes the same mistake in the future they will stumble across this solution! Thanks again for your generous help. Tom.

3 replies

Participating Frequently
February 15, 2025

I'm having the same issue with Indesign 20.1x64 enterprise edition. I haven't cut off text. I saved to an idml file format reopened and am still having the identical issue. Talk about pulling hair out. I have HUNDREDS of footnotes, endnotes and hyperlinks in this document and none of them are working correctly. Footnotes are not automatically linked. I am having to create text anchors on the footnote within the copy then at the bottom of the page. Endnotes are not in order unless they are created in order.... The process to add hyperlinks is insane: click hyperlink button, click + to add hyperlink, require multiple clicks: unclick shared content, unclick Share Hyperlink Destination, apply style, add Accessibility copy. Then after all of this when I do an accessibility check in Acrobat all of the links show an unmarked annotation error which require another series of clicks for each link and adding a title. I don't know how I am ever going to get the document finished. Everytime I begin a new process something in Indesign is broken. Also this is not happening in just this document, all of my Indesign documents are doing this. I have saved the file locally on my computer and on my network. I have been talking to Adobe techs, I think, since November. 

Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 15, 2025

Debbie, your comment touches on many points. What problem would you like help with? Could you narrow this down? We can help. Care to share your document?

Mike Witherell
Participating Frequently
February 16, 2025

Hi Mike I wasn't quite sure how to upload with this interface but it's pretty straight forward once you spot the drag and drop button 😄

Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 1, 2024

Ha! That was the first thing I though of, but I re-read "I have tried to reinsert it on the original page in the text and to get all the subsequent endnotes to reorder" several times so discounted it! 

 

So glad you figured it out and are back on track. I'll mark your answer as correct, and we'll see you the next you need a hand.

 

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Participant
February 2, 2024

I should probably have mentioned that it is a highly illustrated book, images on almost every page, with sometimes hardly any text. There were only about eight lines of text in the text box with the missing endnote. By the way, James, what is PEBCAK? 

Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 2, 2024

An abbreviation for Problem Exists Between Computer And Keyboard, aka we are the problem. 😉

 

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 31, 2024

Hi Tom:

 

This is odd, and obviously not how it is supposed to work. What version of InDesign are you using? I see references to this from 2018–2019, but nothing recently. And I can't re-create it in 2024.

 

I don't have a clear answer but I would try a few things to see if we can force it to straighten out:

  1. Recompose all stories: Mac: Cmd+Opt+/ or Windows: Ctrl +Alt+/ (This forces InDesign to reflow all of the stories.)
  2. Save the file as .idml. Open the .idml file and then resave it under a new name. (This can remove corruption in a file.)
  3. Click in the story, Edit > Select all, Edit > Copy and paste the story in a brand new file. (If this works, we can talk about the next step.)

 

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
January 31, 2024

I'd place my bet on #2, the IDML export/reimport. Endnotes are the canary in the coal mine for document corruption, and I can think of few cases where this purge/rebuild didn't fix at least basic endnote glitches like this one.