Convert Endnotes to Cross References?

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    • #89317
      Matt Mayerchak
      Participant

      Hi – I do a lot of long books but believe it or not, have never really needed to do much with cross references before – I’ve mostly just done page hyperlinks, url hyperlinks, bookmarks, etc.

      Now I have a humongous book – 500 pages, 30 chapters, thousands of endnotes and many hundreds of footnotes.

      Each chapter has its endnotes within the same InDesign file. I used the Book panel to assemble and renumber pages, and create the Index (index markers came from the Word manuscript).

      The book is already laid out and is nearly final – there will be almost no additional edits. Nothing that will change page numbering.

      I need to do two things a lot: A) add cross refs from selected phrases in the Word manuscript to other places in the book (other InDesign files). When we make the full-book PDF, these need to work on the PDF.

      B) I need to make links from every endnote ref # to the actual endnote (always within the same .indd file). I couldn’t use Peter Karel’s endnotes script to turn footnotes into cross-referenced endnotes because there are hundreds of footnotes per chapter, AND hundreds of endnotes per chapter. (Doctors and Lawyers!)

      1. What is the best way to do A? (I have DTP tools – is cross references pro the best tool for that?) What’s the benefit of cross refs vs. page hyperlinks?
      2. Anybody know how to do B (link the endnote refs to the notes)?

      Endnote and Footnote refs co-exist (such as “9,c”, but have different character styles.
      The footnotes already show on the same page, so we don’t need to do anything with those except leave them alone.

      I hope I don’t have to do these endnotes by hand – one chapter has 350 of them and there are 30 chapters.

    • #89489

      Hi Matt, news? (^/) ;-)

    • #89493
      Matt Mayerchak
      Participant

      Yes – I found a script by Peter Kahrel called Dynamic endnotes.jsx that converts the endnotes to cross references and makes them live.

      The script requires that all endnotes have a unique character style (different from the footnotes and any punctuation, etc.). It also requires that the Endnote text have a paragraph style that is not used for something else, and that they are manually numbered to start with.

      When you run the script, it asks you for the name of the character style to look for for the endnote refs, and the paragraph style for the endnote text. Then it changes all of the endnote text to a new paragraph style that is auto-numbered, and adds cross references to all of the references in the text.

      Due to the complexity of my document, the script needed some updating. We used leading tabs before our endnote text, because we have single, double, and triple digit endnotes and all the numbers need to align, so Peter edited the script to find endnote text that begins with a tab and a number (^\t\d+ in GREP). After running the script, I apply a new, auto-numbered version of my endnote paragraph styles, which have unique indents for the 1, 2 or 3 digit numbers.

      If the number of endnote refs and notes paragraphs don’t match, the script gives an error message and stops.

      Another wrinkle was multi-paragraph endnotes; Peter added something to handle those, but depending on how you style those, you may need to do some workarounds to combine those paragraphs before running the script and then split them out again afterward. But that’s a very simple thing.

      I’m not sure if he has posted the new script, which has a new name. I’ll invite Peter to jump in here and post a link to where that can be found.

      BTW, Peter was SUPER helpful with all of this, even on a weekend. I was very happy to send him some $ for his time. If you use someone’s “free” scripts and they save you a lot of time and you make money using them, PLEASE do the right thing and pay some of the savings back to the developer.

    • #89496

      I Know Peter and have studied all the scripts he posted on his web site!

      https://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/dynamic_endnotes.html

      No update since may 2015!

      (^/)

    • #89503
      Peter Kahrel
      Participant

      Hi Matt,

      Thank you for your kind words.

      > What is the best way to do A? (I have DTP tools – is cross references pro the best tool for that?)

      Yes, especially if you work with InDesign books, DTPtools’s cross-references are superior to InDesign’s. They work in a similar way, so if you’ve ever used InDesign’s cross-references, DTPtools’s xrefs will look familiar. Not only are DTPtools’s cross-refs quicker and more robust, they also let you do cross-references to footnote numbers, something that InDesign sorely lacks.

      > What’s the benefit of cross refs vs. page hyperlinks?

      In the PDF, page hyperlinks always show the whole page. With cross-refs you can target text anchors in InDesign, which means that in the PDF you can zoom in on the text where the cross-ref is.

      > find endnote text that begins with a tab and a number (^\t\d+ in GREP).

      Actually, the script (update now posted) looks for ^\t*\d+, i.e. including zero tabs.

      Peter

    • #89505

      Thanks Peter for this “30/11/2016” update! Christmas gift really in advance! ;-)

      (^/)

    • #97156

      Hey Matt,

      Did you find a solution for cross-referencing endnotes, so that the superscripted number goes to the endnote, and then endnote comes back again? I have a book I am doing with hundreds of endnotes which I have hyperlinked (text hyperlink) from the number to the note, but I am wondering if I need to make them come back again from the endnote to the superscripted number?

      Do you know? Thoughts on best method?

      Thanks Matt!
      Steve

    • #97157
      Matt Mayerchak
      Participant

      Steve,

      Peter Kahrel’s script “dynamic endnotes.jsx” is great. It will do this.

      it’s also good because if you have to remove or add notes, they can update the #s. That’s a lot of work manually! His script turns your endnotes into a Numbered List.

      It’s a free script, but if you use it for a big project and are getting paid well, I suggest sending him a few bucks.

      He also provides tech support if you have special requirements, as I did because we had both footnotes AND endnotes on the same pages.

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