Importing Word doc with Endnotes makes Footnotes in FM

[Nedlaw]

Hi. Not a FM newbie, but coming back after a long absence. Using 16.0.0.754 (2020) on Win10 1909.

I'm importing a Word doc that is loaded with endnotes -- 75 of them in 14 pages. The Word doc appears to me to be "clean" -- that is, endnotes are formatted as endnotes in the Word doc and they all appear at the end. For compatibility, I've saved the Word doc as a) rtf, b) a .doc file, and c) its native Word 365 format, .docx.

Using File | Import in FM (and trying each of my saved formats in turn), I select the corresponding paragraph formats and import. The text of the doc comes into Frame just fine, but all the endnotes appear as footnotes on the pages where they appear. They also have lost some of their internal formatting -- hyperlinks, italics, and boldface, for example. Perhaps I am doing something wrong... The big issue is that they appear to have come in as footnotes, not endnotes.

However, before the upgrade (when I was still using Frame 2019, I imported a similar doc. All the endnotes came in flawlessly -- with even their included URLs intact. Perhaps the methodology has changed...?

Can someone help me figure this out, please? I have a book to prepare, and this is only the first chapter.

Thanks to the community, as always.

-j

[Nedlaw]

Yes -- I realize that FrameMaker does not have an endnote functionality per se. But I would expect the endnotes clustered at the end of the document in Word to come in at the end of the document in Frame -- as they did in an earlier test. Maybe FM 2020 is enforcing some level of formatting that it did not enforce in 2019.

[Nedlaw · Accepted solution]

It turns out that this is an acknowledged FM bug in 2020 v16.0.0.754 that has evidently been reported several times. I have been in contact with FrameMaker support -- in detail -- and have been assured that the programmers "are working on it." Adobe states that a fix will be available "in an update" at at unpecified date in the future.

Regretfully, I've had to move the project back to InDesign and its much more convoluted approach to eBook output. (eBooks can't use footnores -- no page foot -- so references must all be endnotes. Frame has a great one-click ebook output... but for now I can't use it.)

[K.Daube]

You may have a look on my script FMnotes https://www.daube.ch/docu/fmaker83.html

Klaus Daube

[Nedlaw]

Thank you -- I had already found you via a web search 🙂 and your software may do the trick.

However, when testing Frame 2019, it successfully imported Word endnotes to the end of the Frame document and made them cross-references, while preserving internal formatting. Frame 2020 no longer does that. It imports Word endnotes only as footnotes (admittedly putting them on the correct page) and throws away any internal formatting. This generates a lot of handwork. There are hundreds of endnotes per chapter.

Why was this functionality removed? I don't know. 

This change in the Adobe software de-rails a major project for a client.