GREP or script to move punctuation to before a footnote reference in an InDesign text.

[Caro31217572wgdd]

I'm designing a textbook with a lot of footnote reference numbers. They all have the Characterstyle "Footnote_Numbers" (I made them pink). Two things: 1) The punctuation is now AFTER the Footnote Numbers, instead of before. 2) There are also footnote numbers in the middle of a scentence and in those cases I need to remove the space that precedes those footnote references, because those all have a white-space before the superiour digits. This white-space has NO character style. I'm trying to get a script or GREP to solve both problems.... Hope one of you wizzards has a solution? THANKS!!

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

This has come up before, several times. Google finds e.g. this post:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/find-and-swap-position-of-period-footnote/m-p/11...

The script there looks for 

'[[:punct:]]~F'

to move punctuation after the footnote reference, which is the opposite of what you want. So you should change the above to

'~F[[:punct:]]'

You then deal with the spaces in a separate query, no script required:

Find what: \h(?=[[:punct:]]?)
Change to: <leave empty>

That is, look for a (horizontal) space followed a punctuation mark (optionally) and a space. Replace the space with nothing.

[Caro31217572wgdd]

Unluckily, this solution doesn't work, nothing happens when running the script:

app.findGrepPreferences = app.findChangeGrepOptions = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = '~F[[:punct:]]';
found = app.documents[0].findGrep();
for (i = found.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
found[i].characters[0].move (LocationOptions.AFTER, found[i].characters[1]);
}

What do i do wrong? To explain my problem again: in my text some numbers are superiour and they have the Characterstyle "Footnote_Numbers". The punctuation is now AFTER these superiour numbers instead of before. 

[Peter Kahrel]

> in my text some numbers are superiour and they have the Characterstyle "Footnote_Numbers".

Are those superior numbers real footnote references? (Sorry, I have to ask.)

[Caro31217572wgdd]

No, good question! I have the impression that that is the core of my problem, they are just superior numbers, the link to the references is broken...

[Peter Kahrel]

So the footnote texts are in separate frames at the foot of the pages, correct? If not, what does it look like? Can you show a screenshot? Please enable the display of frames and hidden characters. Or post your document.

[Caro31217572wgdd]

[Caro31217572wgdd]

the footnotes itself are at the end of the chapter.

[Caro31217572wgdd]

[Peter Kahrel]

So they're endnotes, not footnotes 🙂

You need this version of the script:

app.findGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = '\\d+[[:punct:]]';
found = app.activeDocument.findGrep();
for (i = found.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
  if (found[i].characters[0].appliedCharacterStyle.name == 'Footnote_Numbers') {
    found[i].characters[-1].move (
      LocationOptions.BEFORE, found[i].insertionPoints[0]
    );
  }
}

[Caro31217572wgdd]

Hihi, very much ENDNOTES! I keep calling them all footnotes, but now I hopefully am cured. I am getting an error though.

[Peter Kahrel]

I corrected the script, above (= should be ==). I didn't see the error here because of, well, because. Sorry. 

[Caro31217572wgdd]

You are a hero! How happy one can be when a script works... ridiculous. What I forgot was that there are superiour numbers with more than 1 reference. They even have punctuation in that style "Footnote_Numbers" as you can see, I think I will correct that by hand?

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

Manually -- the thought!

Here's another approach. The script now looks for anything in the FootnoteNumbers style, and if the following character is punctuation,  it's moved.

You'll have to run it against a version of the document as it was before you ran the previous script.

app.findGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = 
  app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item('Footnote_Numbers');
found = app.activeDocument.findGrep();
for (i = found.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
  x = found[i].parentStory.characters[found[i].insertionPoints[-1].index];
  if ('.,;!?'.indexOf(x.contents) >= 0) {
    x.move (LocationOptions.BEFORE, found[i].insertionPoints[0]);
  }
}