Force some text to bottom of text frame...sort of like a footnote.

[mollym77494445]

Hello,

I have sort of a unique problem. I'm formatting a long multipage document, it's a choose your own adventure-like novel. Sometimes at the end of the page is a list of choices that is suppose to sit on the bottom margin. Currently I have the document formatted so that when the regular text ends I have a column break and the choices are in a separate text box that is aligned to the bottom (see screen cap)

This works okay, except that this text isn't fully written yet, so I expect lots of reflow, so I will have to delete and add a bunch of these boxes to fix it. I don't like this option because I can't really think of a good way to put it on a master page (since the text ends in different places on different pages) and there's no way to style the "Turn to page" text to sit at the bottom of the page independent of the rest of the text.

I thought I'd sort of be able to treat these as footnotes and achieve the desired formatting, if I could get rid of the numbers. The issue with that is even though I can make the notation within the text white (and therefore invisible) I can not make the numbered list within the footnotes disappear (see screen cap)

Does anyone have a clever solution for how to format this?

[vinny38]

Hi

Cross-references are your friends ^^

Insert and manage cross-references in InDesign

[mollym77494445]

Hi Vinny,

that is a very cool feature, but that does not actually answer my question about getting my text to sit at the bottom of the page without having to draw a 2nd text box.

[Barb Binder]

Hi Molly: I don't know how you can accomplish this without a second text frame. InDesign does have a vertical justification feature that aligns to first line to the top of the frame, and the last line to the bottom of the frame, but... it feathers the spacing on all of the lines of text so you won't have that gap of white space between the body copy and the instructions. It would be great if the text was almost reaching the bottom, but not for the page you are showing us.

[vinny38 · Accepted solution]

Yes you can combine both footnotes and cross references features.

You can easily get rid of the number using a nested style ("Invisible" character up to tab) in your Footnote formatting para style.

[mollym77494445]

That totally worked. I thought the number would be unaffected by a nested style, but sure enough it made it disappear. Thanks!

[Barb Binder]

I just went over to InDesign to play with that! Nice one, Vinny!

[vladan saveljic]

or in this way:

[mollym77494445]

Yes this worked for me. I tried using "^." but "~F" is probably better. Apologies if anyone saw the crazy text in that screen cap I just deleted. This is a parody of a bonkers romance novel and the text is a little risqué