Converting footnotes to end-of-chapter endnotes

[Jonlin Creative]

I'm typesetting a book that has several dozen footnotes. I received the file in Word with the automatic footnoting. The file imported just fine, including the footnotes, and I was moving along with the formatting when I found out that the authors want to change the footnotes to end-of-chapter endnotes instead.

Is there a good (hopefully fast!) way to do this?

[Derek Cross]

I'm not a footnotes / end-notes person, but I understand that InDesign CC2019 introduced a feature of converting footnotes to end-notes.

[Jonlin Creative]

There is a convert feature, yes, but I don't know how to get them at the end of each chapter rather than all at the end of the book.

If anyone knows how to do that, I would be grateful!

[Laubender]

Hi Jonlin_Creative,

endnotes always go either at the end of a story or the end of a document.

There is no feature that endnotes of a book go the end of the last document of a book file.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Jonlin Creative]

Thank you for the input, Laubender. I'm actually not working with a book file. I'm simply typesetting a book in a regular InDesign file.

What my client wants is for the footnotes/endnotes of each chapter to go at the end of the chapter rather than at the bottom of each page or the end of the book. Is there a way to do that other than doing it all manually? I wondered if setting up each chapter as a new section would work, but I haven't seen a way to put endnotes at the end of a section.

Putting the endnotes at the end of a story won't do the trick either since I'm only working with one story (all the text for the book is in linked text frames).

Am I basically out of luck unless I format all the endnotes manually?

[Steven Hiatt]

Hi Uwe,

I'm not trying to set book endnotes--just ordinary chapter endnotes. InDesign insists on setting the endnotes not at the end of the story, after the last bit of document text--but on a separate page following that one. So that I now have 5 lines of text on page 16, and plenty of room to set six endnotes beneath them on page 16. But InDesign absolutely insists on setting the endnotes on a separate page 17. No interior text designer would ever, ever do this. And I see no way to change it. If you simply copy and move the endnotes to a position at the end of text on page 16, you lose the auto-generated endnote reference numbers, which are replaced by question marks within angle brackets. Not cool. By the way, I've selected Load the Place Cursor for Endnote Frame in the Endnote Options dialog box. It has no effect at all. You would think the behavior I've described would hold if I had chosen On a New Frame--but I didn't. 

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Jonlin_Creative,

then I would split the one big story to chapter ones.

To split a story you could use a script by Timothy Ariel Walden from Id Extras:

Break Text Thread: A Free InDesign Script
by Ariel, January 28, 2020

http://www.id-extras.com/break-text-thread/

Important: Read about what Ariel says about footnotes there.

And test it on a duplicate of your document.

If you are using the current version of InDesign you should find the script already ready to use in the Community section of the InDesign Scripts panel.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Jonlin Creative]

Thank you for that information and the link! The client ended up deciding to keep the bottom-of-page footnotes, but this will be helpful if I come across a similar need in the future (I did test it and it worked as advertised).

[Laubender]

"I'm not trying to set book endnotes--just ordinary chapter endnotes. InDesign insists on setting the endnotes not at the end of the story, after the last bit of document text--but on a separate page following that one."

Hi Steven,

that's "normal" behavior. Means, the feature is built that way.

Endnote texts always have to live in their own endnote story.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )