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Eshu153
Eshu153
Inspiring
April 4, 2020
Answered

Endnotes not linking epub export

  • April 4, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 4546 views

Endnotes not linking in epub export. I see the same question has been unanswered in many threads. It used to work fine with InDesign CC 2017. Now, the latest version doesn't work. I spent hours creating 500 end notes in the print version. 

 

Is there any fix available to this? 

 

Thanks and Regards

Eswari

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Eshu153

    Thank you. 

    But, fortunately, I was able to figure out the issue. It's the text frames with baseline grid-enabled issue. Once I turn off the baseline grid, I was able to convert all endnotes to footnotes and successfully generated my epub.

     

    Thanks and Regards

    Eswari

    3 replies

    L
    Community Expert
    LaubenderCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 28, 2022

    Roope Koski said: "1. Exported PDFs generally work, except if your endnote style has Adobe World-Ready Paragaph Composer enabled.  In this case links back from endnotes are broken."

     

    The issue with Adobe World-Ready Paragaph Composer and endnotes linking seems to be known to the developers.

    At InDesign UserVoice Adobe's Ravi Kiran (Senior Lead Quality Engineer, Adobe InDesign) said: "Thanks for reporting the issue of backlinking not working for Endnotes with WR Composers. We’re going to review this shortly." That was on February 10, 2021 in my bug report here:

    https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/42062446-text-formatting-can-break-backlinking-endnote-text

     

    FWIW: My report did not mention the Adobe World-Ready Paragaph Composer at all.

    I had other issues with endnote formatting that prevented back and forth linking of endnotes. All my findings are listed in that bug report. Also see into the comments section of this report.

     

    Regards,
    Uwe Laubender

    ( ACP )

    R
    Roope Koski
    Participating Frequently
    February 27, 2022

    The last post of Oston5EB3 makes sense.

     

    Notes in exported PDF and ePub are buggy.   The problem is that when you click a note in the exported file, nothing happens.

    Here is what I found so far.

     

    EPUB

    1. Export with endnotes and "Split EPUB" checked for some styles -> links to notes broken

    2. Convert endnotes to footnotes -> notes work as pop-ups, as expected, (but need to re-convert every time when you export PDF)

    3. Keep endnotes and remove "Split EPUB" from all styles -> notes work as endnotes, even if you want them as pop-ups. 

     

    PDF

    1. Exported PDFs generally work, except if your endnote style has Adobe World-Ready Paragaph Composer enabled.  In this case links back from endnotes are broken.

    2. Switch back to Adobe Paragraph Composer and links work back and forth

    3. If you need World-Ready, create backlinks manually

     

     

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    March 2, 2022

    There is rarely any reason to use Split EPUB, at least as an ID export.

     

    Just about the only reason for multi-file EPUBs is for ease of creation and management when using the manual editors and EPUB creators, which doesn't apply for ID development. Dividing up the content (to multiple internal XHTML files) is largely pointless.

     

    The one place where splitting a large EPUB can be useful is for online/web access. I believe some readers can download one content document at a time, speeding up access to any given section of a document. But that again is something of a niche use. (IMHO, if you're going to put a large document up for web access, use HTML, not EPUB.)

     

    —

    R
    Roope Koski
    Participating Frequently
    March 3, 2022

    NitroPress, I am using Split EPUB for retaining some of the layout structure of a PDF in reflowable epubs.

     

    The texts I edit have introductions, and I want the actual content to begin on a new page with the title of the translated text on top.  Especially I don't want situations where half of the title appear at the bottom of the page, glued to the end of the introduction.

     

    Is there a better way to do this than with Split EPUB?

     

    Thanks

    Peter Villevoye
    Community Expert
    Peter VillevoyeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 26, 2020

    I'm not familiar with the current Footnotes/Endnotes state of the art (and its bugs...)

    I do know that in case of errors, and other mayhem, everyone turns to Peter Kahrel.

    However, he retired. But his repository of scripts and documentation is still avaliable: 

    https://indesignsecrets.com/peter-kahrels-script-repository-comes-to-creativepro.php

    Eshu153
    Eshu153AuthorCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    January 11, 2021

    Thank you. 

    But, fortunately, I was able to figure out the issue. It's the text frames with baseline grid-enabled issue. Once I turn off the baseline grid, I was able to convert all endnotes to footnotes and successfully generated my epub.

     

    Thanks and Regards

    Eswari

    Peter Villevoye
    Community Expert
    Peter VillevoyeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 12, 2021

    Sounds like the problem which was occurring in my document.

    Most of the endnotes contained indeed web URLs (turned into hyperlinks).

    We quickly used Find/Replace in Sigil to correct all references to the endnote with the full file name part, and the references back to the text were done manually – a lousy job, but with some music and a mug of strong black tea, it went quite quickly after all...

     

    This long-standing bug is "under investigation" by the Adobe developers team, but this might take a few more days or years to get prioritised and solved.


    Oh yeah, thank you again Eshu ! That was exactly what was happening: adding insult to injury, InDesign also crashes when you try to export the whole thing ! So I created a separate batch of html consisting of all text articles including (incomplete) endnote references, plus one empty final article (with its intended name), to let the proper manifest for the ePub be created. Next, I created a separate ePub of just the unlinked endnotes article, to replace the (empty) placeholder of the full ePub. And then we completed and corrected all links to and from the endnotes. 

     

    Some knowledge of html and a tool like Sigil has become neccessary to get an ePub out of InDesign... 😞

     

    Next time, I'll definitely try to notice if overset text is a culprit in combination with footnotes/endnotes, crashing InDesign upon exporting, and I'll also try see if hyperlinks in endnotes create an extra problem (incomplete links). It's a shame we have to do the testing and diagnosing.

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