Adobe InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Footnote Finesse

Flow Word's Footnotes with Text Correctly

I have a big Microsoft Word document full of hundreds of footnotes. But when I import it into InDesign CS, all the footnotes show up at the end of the story as endnotes! How do I get them to the proper place.

You get these footnotes to the proper place very slowly and very carefully. The only fun part of placing footnotes in InDesign CS is when you fall into that recurring daydream of the day you get to upgrade to CS2. Yes, CS2 has a footnote feature which can read Word's footnotes and put them in the right place on the page.

But in InDesign CS, you're pretty much out of luck, you'll have to place them manually:

1.

Select all the endnotes (the footnotes) and cut the selection to the clipboard.

2.

Go to the document page where the first footnote reference appears. (You might want to temporarily change the footnote reference's Character Style so it's easier to spot in the text flow.)

3.

Drag out a new text frame, roughly sized to hold the first footnote or two, at the bottom of this first page, right on top of the page text frame.

4.

Don't resize the frame holding the page text, instead, apply a text wrap to the footnote frame so it pushes the page text out of the way, setting a top offset of a couple picas or a half-inch or so to the wrap so there's some breathing room between the page text and the footnotes.

TIP

With the Type tool active but nothing selected, turn on Bounding Box Text Wrap and set the top offset measure. All the footnote frames you create from then on will wrap by default. (Don't forget to turn it off when you're done!)

5.

Paste the contents of your clipboard (the endnotes you cut in Step 1) into the new footnote frame. Adjust the frame's height to reveal the footnote text for this page.

6.

With the Selection tool, click on the footnote text frame's overset icon to load the remaining footnote text.

7.

Move to the next document page with a footnote reference and drag out another footnote text frame.

8.

Repeat steps 47 until all the footnotes are placed.

Since the footnote frames are threaded, you can enter Frame Breaks (Type > Insert Break Character > Frame Break) as necessary to help force footnotes to start at the correct page as you make adjustments. If you need to add a footnote frame in the middle of the thread, click the Out port icon of the footnote frame immediately preceding it, then with the loaded text cursor, drag out the new frame. The thread remains intact.

Sounds like fun, eh? And we haven't mentioned the issue of styling the footnotes and their references, nor what happens if you need to add a new footnote reference (it won't work). There are ways you can make this a little easier, including using master page frames for footnotes, and massaging footnote styling in Word before you ever bring it in.

But if you'll ever need to do this more than once, you should either purchase a Footnotes plug-in (such as InFnote from Virginia Systems, www.virginiasystems.com) or upgrade to InDesign CS2. Otherwise you'll go insane.

Get Your Footnote Number Back

Ack! I accidentally deleted a footnote number at the bottom of my page (where the footnote text is). I can just type the footnote number back in, but then that footnote doesn't get renumbered automatically when I add or remove a footnote before this one.

Yes, while InDesign CS2 offers a pretty powerful footnote feature, you can still get yourself in trouble pretty easily. In this case, don't type the footnote number yourself (if you already did, just delete it). Instead, place the text cursor at the beginning of the line and choose Type > Insert Special Character > Footnote Number. This only works when the text cursor is in a footnote text area (not up with your body text), and this special character will update properly.

Jump Between Footnote Number and Text

I love being able to add footnotes in CS2. I click where I want a footnote, choose Type > Insert Footnote, and then type the footnote text at the bottom of the text column. But it's bothersome that I have to click back in the body of the text above again. Isn't there a keyboard shortcut for "go back to where I put the footnote reference"?

It sounds like what you want already exists as a menu item: Type > Go to Footnote Reference. You may not have noticed this feature because it only appears when your cursor is in the footnote text. However, if you do this a lot, use the Edit > Keyboard Shortcut feature to give the Insert Footnote feature a shortcut. (That's under the Type menu product area.) When you give Insert Footnote a shortcut, that same shortcut applies to the Go to Footnote Reference feature.

Unfortunately, there's no equivalent command for jumping from an existing Footnote Reference in the text back down to its footnote for further editing. If this is something you do frequently, consider jumping to the Story Editor (Edit > Edit in Story Editor, or Command/Ctrl-Y) instead. If your cursor is at the footnote reference number in the layout, pressing Command/Ctrl-Y puts your cursor right next to the matching footnote text in the Story Editor (Figure 7-5). Slick!

Footnote text in the Story Editor appears in a cool little boxes in the text flow, directly following their reference numbers in the text. They're expanded by default, revealing the footnote text, which you can edit just like regular text. To close a box, click on either side of it. (Closing a footnote box in the Story Editor just hides it from view, it doesn't delete the footnote.) You can also choose "Collapse All Footnotes" or "Expand All Footnotes" from the View > Story Editor menu. You can insert and delete footnotes in the Story Editor using the same commands as in normal layout view.

When you want to close the Story Editor and return to the layout, press Command/Ctrl-Y again. That way InDesign puts your text cursor in the same location as it last was in the Story Editor.

Formatting Footnotes

InDesign always seems to put a tab between my footnote number or symbol and the text that follows it, but doesn't finish the job by setting up the indents properly so the footnotes "hang." It seems like I should be able to change that.

The trick to fine-tuning how InDesign formats footnotes is to choose Type > Document Footnote Options. At the bottom of the Numbering and Formatting panel in this dialog box, you can assign a Character Style to the footnote reference (the number) in the text, and a Paragraph Style to the footnote itself. You can even edit the Separator field itself, which by default shows "^t" (that's the code for a tab character). Want to change it to a tab followed by an "indent here" character (so that the rest of footnote is indented to that point)? Just type "^t^i" (no quotes, of course). Want a period followed by an em space after the number? Type ".^m" instead.