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ChrisKou
Participating Frequently
January 15, 2024
Answered

Spanned Footnotes BUG

  • January 15, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 530 views

Working on a book with spanned footnotes in InDesign has been by far the most frustrating experience I have ever had, and I have been doing graphic design and typesetting since 1998.

 

Indesign freezes up, placing images is impossible or takes 10+ minutes to adjust, reflowing takes forever and I am left twiddling my thumbs waiting for the program to respond.

 

FIX YOUR SOFTWARE, ADOBE!!!!!!!!!@!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

    Thank you for the input, James. And yes, I even broke the project into smaller files and only used spanned on pages that absolutely needed it. The files are still unworkable.


    Final feeble tool: Edit in InCopy.

     

    Some projects just win the battle. 🙂

    3 replies

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    ChrisKouAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    March 1, 2024

    UPDATE: We went to doing endnotes instead of footnotes. Which irks me as an academic, but now the file works.

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    January 16, 2024

    FWIW, I don't believe it's a universal bug. That is, many docs with spanned footnotes have no problems at all. It seems to be a problem caused by spans when certain other conditions are present, and maybe on specific system/OS versions.

     

    You might try a Save-As under a different file name to reduce the file bloat, and if that doesn't help, try a save to IDML, reopen that, save under a new INDD name. That does a heavy purge on the file, rewrites the structure and often solves frustrating glitches of all kinds.

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      ChrisKouAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      January 16, 2024

      Thanks for the suggestions, James. I have tried all of those though. Just exported IDML and opened that. The issue persists. Even backspacing a character takes 10 seconds or so to register. Forget about placing images.

      James Gifford—NitroPress
      James Gifford—NitroPress
      Legend
      January 16, 2024

      Are you using GREP styles or nested styles? Any of the features that require continuous/realtime adjustment can conflict with editing and cause such delays, with spanned footnotes being a big snag in the flow.

       

      Consider un-spanning the footnotes until the very final editing stages. There should be very little difference in page-to-page flow.

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        ChrisKouAuthor
        Participating Frequently
        January 15, 2024

        I will add, this is a bug in the software that has been around for AT LEAST 7 YEARS.

        https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/when-i-use-quot-span-footnote-across-columns-quot-the-file-became-very-slow/td-p/9228877

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