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cjg34109764
Participating Frequently
September 25, 2019
Question

Placing Endnotes from Word in Indesign

  • September 25, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 672 views

I have a hefty 300-page Word document with 1350 endnotes. I have formatted the document and applied styles to it. I created section breaks so that the endnotes' numbering re-started with every new chapter, i.e., at Chapter 2, the first footnote is "1" not "150." Now, when I go to Place the Word document in InDesign (I'm using InDesign CC 14.0.1), the endnotes do not come through correctly. Various things happen depending on my presets but no matter what I do, nothing seems to work; the endnotes never come through correctly or completely. I have 1350 notes, so this is not something I can reasonably do manually. I've been in touch with several Adobe representatives, one of which took over my computer for 2 hours, and was unable to do what I needed. But also I'm not confidant they understood what I needed. I'm now in touch with another representative who is giving me circular advice that I'm not sure will work. 

 

This seems like a simple enough request, and something I imagine many people run into when formatting books with many citations. What is the fix? Can anyone help?

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    3 replies

    Dave Creamer of IDEAS
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 26, 2019

    Are you chapters in separate InDesign documents or one large document?

    David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)
    Geоrge
    Legend
    September 25, 2019

    Please, first of all do update to 14.0.3

    Remember, never say you can't do something in InDesign, it's always just a question of finding the right workaround to get the job done. © David Blatner
    cjg34109764
    Participating Frequently
    September 25, 2019
    ok i am doing that now. do you really think that will help
    Geоrge
    Legend
    September 25, 2019
    Thank you, George. All right. I updated, and I placed the document from an .RTF file, and that seems to have worked pretty well. I tried placing it from .DOC, but it retained none of my formatting. I placed it from .RTF and it retained the formatting, mostly, but the problem now is that the endnotes are all one continuous string of numbers, meaning, they don't restart with each new chapter, meaning at Chapter 2, the first footnote is "43" not "1". Is there a way to fix this?? My Adobe representative tells me to do it manually, but I can't possibly re-number 1350 endnotes, throughout a 400-page document. That would take a million years and I would likely make errors. Is there a way to get the endnotes to re-number by designating section breaks or something? I'm also open to going back to the Word Document and trying to lay it out differently…

    >> but it retained none of my formatting.

    It looks strange. Did you check import options when placing .doc? (it have mapping styles and other features).

     

     

    Remember, never say you can't do something in InDesign, it's always just a question of finding the right workaround to get the job done. © David Blatner
    cjg34109764
    Participating Frequently
    September 25, 2019

    I've read in a couple of threads that InDesign simply does not support end notes. Is that the problem? Is there no work-around? I am incredulous if the answer is no. I will probably end up formatting this thing in Word if not. I can't understand how heavily cited books get made if InDesign cannot do this. Nearly every book I own has pages and pages of endnotes. This seems like something the program should be able to do, relatively easily.