Footnotes in side bar text boxes

Hi

this is tricky, I like that ^^

Since the Jedi hasn't showed up yet, here's a suggestion.

Definitely not fully automated, (and not a one click solution!!!) but it might do the trick...

1. First let's go to Master page. Create rulers (or columns) as for desired layout.
2. Create two text frames. For better understanding purpose, i did color the background. Yellow one will contain main text, blue one for aside text.
   Align Main frame to top margin and aside frame to bottom.
3. Thread them, starting from main to aside.
4. Open wrap window and give Main frame left value same than your gutter (in my example: 10mm)
   For now, thinks should look like this:
   
   
   
5. OK now, lets import/type some text and add a few footnotes, 1 and 2 in the main and a 3rd one in the aside column.
   tip: If your aside text will never contain more than 1 paragraph, you can set keep option in order to make it start next column.
6. Create a style for footnotes (we'll need it later, and it's a good practice anyway)
7. Let's play around with footnotes layout options. Text > Footnotes options > Layout
   Unfortunately, we have to get rid of the rule above 1st footnote :-(
   Make sure "Place End Of Story Footnotes At Bottom Of Text" is unchecked.
   You may also give space between footnote same value than your footnotes para leading (here: 14pt)
   For now, thinks should look like this:
   
   
   
   
   
8. Duplicate your footnote para style. In the new para style, give left indent value in order to align it with rulers.
   Apply this style to the aside footnote (n°3)
9. Almost done, all you have to do now is dragging up the aside frame where you want it to start, and dragging down the main text frame. In order to make this last operation more easy and precise, you can create a few rulers, starting from bottom margin with a distance equal to footnote para leading (still 14 pt here). Easy to drag down main frame now:
   
10. Here you go, if you want to recreate the above ruler, you'll have to create a new para style and apply it to the very first footnote.
    Of course, if you add footnotes in the aside frame, or if you modify the length of the text of aside footnotes, you'll have to adjust the bottom of the main frame. Including new footnotes in the main frame will be handled automatically.

Hope that helps
regards

Vinny

Thanks for screenshots!

When I'll see them, I'll tell you you could do it in 1 click! 

(^/)

No, that's not within the feature set of InDesign.

But, you could run the footnotes as a separate threaded story (and possibly script it or find a plug-in to automate it) and then you'd have control over placement. Before InDesign supported footnotes (or was it PageMaker?), I used to have my authors add the superscript numbers to the text, and give me the notes in a separate file so that I could manually flow them from page to page. Keep in mind that this technique is very manual—you don't want to add or remove a footnote or you will have to renumber them all and you will need to be responsible for making sure that the notes are on the same page as their reference numbers.

Thinking out loud... you could use auto-numbing on the list of footnotes, and then add the footnote references to the text via an cross-reference these days. Then, at least, the numbers will update if you add or delete a note.