Footnote help

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
November 2, 2022
2 replies
1109 views

I have a very large document and have linked text boxes only in sections. But the client now wants the footnotes to start at 1 at the begining and flow numerically. Why do they not automatically do that in the document - is it because its not one giant text thread? Dont want to do this manulally is there a fix?

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Correct answer Laubender

Hi @littlelady40 ,

if you want the footnote numbers continue automatically, you have to thread all text frames that contain footnotes.

That's how the feature is built.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

Susan Culligan

Inspiring

Hi! This would be a little klunky, but you can use Document Footnote Options (in the Type tab) and set the starting number in the current thread using the Start At #. That would continue through the end of that thread, then set the new starting number in the next thread.

littlelady40Author

Known Participant

Now I tried this, but when you set the number to start at lets says 4 in section two it effects the whole document so all the footnotes in each ection start at same number. I striped them all out and did them manually which is so painful when there is a change or text moves and you have to find them manually 😞

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Legend

I'm with you on this one. We run into it on our clients' long tech documents.

InDesign's footnote utility, as good as it is, misses the mark on so many details.

Restart footnote numbering at various points in the file.
Have multiple footnote series/patterns, more than the standard ones there now. In some technical fields, they use 1,2,3 number footnotes AND also *, **, or a,b,c in the same document. Science documents especially use a, b, c for table footnotes and 1,2,3 for body text footnotes.
Have custom patterns. Some authors have their own patterns, such as *, †, ‡, ** — whatever crazy sequence the author wants.

Consequently, we end up having some manual footnotes in long docs.

Sure wish Adobe would give us a 2.0 version of the footnote utility!

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