Page numbers and footnotes in InDesign

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
November 21, 2019
5 replies
2122 views

I have an issue which is easily duplicated but which I cannot get anyone at Adobe to comprehend and therefore address. It is a bug (or more likely an oversight) in InDesign, but Adobe technical support seems unable to understand this. They think I am describing a problem with my document rather than the application itself.

Briefly, when multiple separate InDesign documents — all with their own page numbers and footnotes — are imported into a single InDesign "Book", neither the page numbers nor the footnotes order themselves sequentially.

Say I have three different InDesign documents of 10 pages each. Page numbering would obviously run from 1-10 in each of the three different documents. But when imported into a "Book", page numbers should now run from 1-10 in the first doc, 11-20 in the second, and 21-30 in the third. This is how you want things to go, especially if additional pages need to be added to any of the three documents. But this doesn't happen. Likewise, if I have 10 footnotes in each of the three documents, in the final book they will run run from 1-10 three times, starting over at 1 in both the second and third documents. This is utterly unacceptable as footnotes should NEVER start over (just as in page numbering).

It is possible to set in each document where I want the pages and footnotes to begin numerically, but this is only a clumsy workaround since all three documents are works in progress and the number of pages and footnotes in each changes almost minute by minute.

Anyone else have this problem? Anyone else have any ideas how I can get someone at Adobe to look at this with eyes that are not preconditioned to see it their way?

Bug

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Jongware

The Book Numbering menu provides book-wide continuous numbering for a couple of items (pages, chapters) but unfortunately not for Footnotes.

However, this is partly inside of what can be achieved with scripting. It is not possible (*) to make this happen automatically when inserting or removing footnotes, or when adding, removing, or re-ordering documents inside a book, but at least it's easy enough to run the following script after you did so.

It opens all of the book's documents and sets the Footnote Starting Number to the correct value for documents that do contain footnotes. Nothing else happens; you'll end up with a screenful of documents, some of which may be altered, so you can verify if it worked correctly. You'll have to save the documents yourself, or discard them if you no like – I am confident it all works correctly but then again you never know.

If "scripting" is a new, thus far undiscovered feature for you, read up on how to 'get' this into your local InDesign on InDesignSecrets: https://indesignsecrets.com/how-to-install-a-script-in-indesign-that-you-found-in-a-forum-or-blog-post.php. You need to know what type of script it is to give it the correct file extension; this one is Javascript so save as "updateFootnoteNumbers.jsx" (technically it's its older & ever so dumber cousin "ExtendScript", but that messes up the mnemonic for the proper extension).

//DESCRIPTION: Update a book's continuous note numbering
// A Jongware Script 23-Nov-2019

/* initialize the first document's note number */
firstNoteNumber = 1;
/* open all of a book's documents one by one */
for (i = 0; i < app.activeBook.bookContents.length; i++)
{
	app.open (app.activeBook.bookContents[i].fullName, true)
	/* try and find any footnote */
	app.findTextPreferences = null;
	app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = "^F"
	anyFn = app.activeDocument.findText();
	if (anyFn.length)
	{
		/* adjust its start number ... */
		app.activeDocument.footnoteOptions.startAt = firstNoteNumber;
		/* ... and adjust for the next document */
		firstNoteNumber += anyFn[0].parentStory.footnotes.length;
	}
}

(*) Only purely theoretically speaking that might also be possible. However, even only trying to see if if can be done would take way longer than the ±10 minutes it took me to whip this up for you, so if you don't mind I'll leave that part to Adobe to add as a Major Improvement to the Next Big New Version™.

Jongware

Correct answer

Community Expert

The Book Numbering menu provides book-wide continuous numbering for a couple of items (pages, chapters) but unfortunately not for Footnotes.

However, this is partly inside of what can be achieved with scripting. It is not possible (*) to make this happen automatically when inserting or removing footnotes, or when adding, removing, or re-ordering documents inside a book, but at least it's easy enough to run the following script after you did so.

It opens all of the book's documents and sets the Footnote Starting Number to the correct value for documents that do contain footnotes. Nothing else happens; you'll end up with a screenful of documents, some of which may be altered, so you can verify if it worked correctly. You'll have to save the documents yourself, or discard them if you no like – I am confident it all works correctly but then again you never know.

If "scripting" is a new, thus far undiscovered feature for you, read up on how to 'get' this into your local InDesign on InDesignSecrets: https://indesignsecrets.com/how-to-install-a-script-in-indesign-that-you-found-in-a-forum-or-blog-post.php. You need to know what type of script it is to give it the correct file extension; this one is Javascript so save as "updateFootnoteNumbers.jsx" (technically it's its older & ever so dumber cousin "ExtendScript", but that messes up the mnemonic for the proper extension).

//DESCRIPTION: Update a book's continuous note numbering
// A Jongware Script 23-Nov-2019

/* initialize the first document's note number */
firstNoteNumber = 1;
/* open all of a book's documents one by one */
for (i = 0; i < app.activeBook.bookContents.length; i++)
{
	app.open (app.activeBook.bookContents[i].fullName, true)
	/* try and find any footnote */
	app.findTextPreferences = null;
	app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = "^F"
	anyFn = app.activeDocument.findText();
	if (anyFn.length)
	{
		/* adjust its start number ... */
		app.activeDocument.footnoteOptions.startAt = firstNoteNumber;
		/* ... and adjust for the next document */
		firstNoteNumber += anyFn[0].parentStory.footnotes.length;
	}
}

(*) Only purely theoretically speaking that might also be possible. However, even only trying to see if if can be done would take way longer than the ±10 minutes it took me to whip this up for you, so if you don't mind I'll leave that part to Adobe to add as a Major Improvement to the Next Big New Version™.

P

Phillip34045841qe9e

Participant

I realize this comment is four years late but I thought it might shed some light on something said early on. In the Turabian style manual, and I would assume the Chicago Manual of Style since they share the same editors and defer to one another, footnotes should restart numbering in each new chapter. In other words, the first footnote number in each chapter should be "1." Of course, one may use any style they prefer, but restarting footnote numbering in each chapter follows editorial guidelines.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Good point, but there are quite a few defined styles; CMS is only one of them. A tool should be adaptable to any style, including an author preference for casual publishing. To lock a universal publication platform to one style, or even some few standard styles, would be counterproductive for a large majority of users.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Well, it's definitely not a bug: it was written to work that way. That puts it entirely outside the scope of tech support, who can (at best) only confirm it is working as designed. It seems a great feature request, so long as it is an option, and probably off by default for compatibility (to avoid messing up people whose workflow would depend on it not happening, and didn't notice until too late). Who would want it not to happen? Anyone whose "book" is an academic journal made of separately footnoted articles, for example.

A

anthonyh76036006Author

Inspiring

These are some seriously well thought-out repies. Thanks to everyone.

S

SJRiegel

Legend

From the Adobe documentation, it looks like you will have to manually restart your footnote numbering for each document as a last step before finalizing your work. You should be able to get the page numbers to cooperate, though.

Start At:

Specify the number used for the first footnote in the story. Each story in a document begins with the same Start At number. If you have multiple documents in a book with continued page numbering, start the footnote numbering in each chapter to continue where the last chapter ends. The Start At option is especially useful for documents in a book. Footnote numbering is not continued across documents in a book.

A

anthonyh76036006Author

Inspiring

Again, thanks. I know all this. My question was how to get Adobe to acknowledge this failing in the program and address it. Talking to tech support gets me notwhere since they just can't seem to understand that I do not want them to fix my document, rather I want them to fix their program. Who, afterall, would want footnotes to — by default — restart at 1 halfway through a book? Am I just not explaiing it right?