Footnotes in body text, not at bottom of page?

Apostropher

Tagged: footnote, position, span column

This topic has 8 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 9 months ago by Eugene Papa.

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- April 5, 2012 at 6:54 pm #61957
  
  Apostropher
  Participant
  
  Hi there,
  
  Hoping someone can help me with this. I've just set up a new InDesign CS5 document and imported some text from Word, and my footnotes are sitting underneath the footnote reference, not at the bottom of the page as is usual. I have never seen this before, and can't work out how to shunt them down to the bottom of the page. Any ideas?
  
  Thanks very much,
  
  Stephen
- April 6, 2012 at 1:30 am #61960
  
  Theunis De Jong
  Member
  
  I think we need to see an image of that. Are you sure the notes come in as real footnotes, and not as plain text?
  
  The only option that usually does this is the checkbox “Place End of Story Footnotes at Bottom of Text”, and that only works for the very last footnote in each story.
- April 6, 2012 at 3:03 am #61961
  
  Apostropher
  Participant
  
  Thanks for your reply. Is there some trick to uploading screenshots from my computer? Clicking on the 'Insert image' button only gives me the option of using a URL. Dragging and dropping into this reply doesn't work either.
  
  But basically, wherever a footnote reference appears in InDesign, the footnote itself sits right underneath it, not in the usual spot at the bottom of the page. I've tried toggling every option, including the 'Place End of Story Footnotes…', looked at Frame Options, rebuilt footnote paragraph styles, but nothing seems to work.
  
  They're definitely footnotes in the Word doc, and I've used Show Import Options in InDesign to confirm that InDesign is importing footnotes.
  
  Very weird.
- April 7, 2012 at 2:37 pm #61964
  
  Apostropher
  Participant
  
  Hup. Worked it out. So there was a Header paragraph style and a Body Text paragraph style that were both used in a single column text frame. The Header paragraph style was set to Span Column, though, which seemed to override the Single Column setting of the Body Text paragraph style.
  
  I changed Column Span in the Header style back to Single Column and woosh, the footnotes in the body text shot down to their proper place at the bottom of the page. Not sure if I've explained it clearly, but anyway, problem solved. :)
  
  Lesson learned: be careful with Span Columns in single column text frames.
- October 28, 2014 at 2:50 am #71271
  
  Tim Masson
  Member
  
  @Apostropher – Thank you for that. I know this is years after your post, but just wanted to say thanks.
  The footnotes seem to want to appear at a “column break” caused by a “span columns” paragraph style. It just caught me out and your comment has saved me a hour or so of frustration. The joy of these communities and the power of Google combine to great things!
- August 29, 2016 at 10:27 am #87884
  
  Natalie Thomas
  Member
  
  Also commenting here to say THANK-YOU. I have been working on a several hundred page report with a ton of footnotes and I couldn’t figure out why they kept pinning to different parts of the page.
- July 9, 2017 at 3:59 pm #95955
  
  Philippe Barey
  Participant
  
  Same here, thanks Stephen for both posting and figuring it out!
- January 31, 2020 at 10:29 am #14323172
  
  Mary Ann Walsh
  Participant
  
  WOW! Thank you so so much! for the footnote span columns. None of the tutorials on span columns mentions setting the 2-columns from the one column page layout. Works perfectly now. I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong all day yesterday! Thanks again!
- July 8, 2020 at 11:41 am #125808
  
  Eugene Papa
  Member
  
  Brilliant! June 2020. This is the best tip in ages. I had been racking my brain for a day. Great stuff and THANK YOU!
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