I am working on a large book and the author would like the text to be in one column and the footnotes in 2 columns. I have done a few volumes of this book in the past and I have used a script to detach the footnotes from the text so that they can be set up in a separate 2 column text box.
I was just wondering if there is any new feature in Indesign that allows this to be done without the script?
Hi tully1254,
Short answer: no — there is still no native feature for that combination. Footnotes are laid out inside the same text frame as the body text and follow that frame's columns, and Type > Document Footnote Options offers no separate column count just for the footnote area.
The only related built-in layout option works in the opposite direction: "Span footnotes across columns" (Document Footnote Options > Layout) lets footnotes in a multi-column frame run across the full frame width instead of sitting at the bottom of one column. It cannot split the footnotes of a one-column frame into two columns.
So for one-column text with two-column footnotes, your current script approach — detaching the footnotes into a separate two-column frame — is still the way to do it.
Official details: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/desktop/indexes-and-references/footnotes-and-endnotes/span-footnotes.html
Hope that saves you some hunting!
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