InDesign endotes: Still no solution?
July 27, 2014 10:12 PM Subscribe
I'm designing a long book in InDesign CC and I need to have endnotes (for each chapter) at the end of the book instead of footnotes on each page. According to several links (1, 2, and 3), this is not possible in InD CC. Keeping in mind that I have absolutely no scripting experience, do you know about any plugin I can download or any easy workaround for this?
Best answer: Oh, and make sure you place (command+D) the Word file with the endnotes into InDesign, don't copy-paste it, because you will lose the little endnote number references within the text otherwise. InDesign gives you some options on import for how to format those if you need to tweak it. I just did it straight and they worked out as nicely formatted superscript numbers, no extra work done. One file would not place for some reason - the original was corrupt - and I almost had to hand-type in the footnotes. Instead, I did a blank Word file, and did the footnotes there much faster on a copy+paste of the text, and used that.
posted by viggorlijah at 10:53 PM on July 27, 2014
posted by viggorlijah at 10:53 PM on July 27, 2014
Response by poster: Wow, thanks for the tips.
What if they're going to edit the book directly in InDesign?
posted by omar.a at 10:59 PM on July 27, 2014
What if they're going to edit the book directly in InDesign?
posted by omar.a at 10:59 PM on July 27, 2014
Best answer: Yell at them not to.
However, you can use linked files, where you set the text frame with the original story in the chapter file as the Parent and then have the endnotes frame for that chapter in the endnotes file as the Child, so any changes to the Parent will be updated to the Child. Use the same trick of frame breaks with text you don't want in a frame off the page so it won't print. You will have to double-check to see if their changes didn't muck up your formatting, like they added new footnotes so your endnote frame is now too small and you need to move the frames about a bit, but it shouldn't be a major hassle.
Note that this works easily with a regular sized book. Mine was 13 chapters with endnotes, about 19-25 pages long altogether when I set them to a tighter small font for a small hardback. If you had like sixty chapters and they were going to add more endnotes right up to the publishing date, I would consider getting a script.
posted by viggorlijah at 11:57 PM on July 27, 2014
However, you can use linked files, where you set the text frame with the original story in the chapter file as the Parent and then have the endnotes frame for that chapter in the endnotes file as the Child, so any changes to the Parent will be updated to the Child. Use the same trick of frame breaks with text you don't want in a frame off the page so it won't print. You will have to double-check to see if their changes didn't muck up your formatting, like they added new footnotes so your endnote frame is now too small and you need to move the frames about a bit, but it shouldn't be a major hassle.
Note that this works easily with a regular sized book. Mine was 13 chapters with endnotes, about 19-25 pages long altogether when I set them to a tighter small font for a small hardback. If you had like sixty chapters and they were going to add more endnotes right up to the publishing date, I would consider getting a script.
posted by viggorlijah at 11:57 PM on July 27, 2014
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I had them change it to endnotes for the Word files. I laid out each chapter as a file inside a book, and put a frame break at the end where the text of the actual chapter finished and before the endnotes started, so the chapters have essentially a hidden overflow of endnote text. You need to turn off autoflow or Indesign will try to add more pages automatically for the missing endnote text. Then for the Endnotes file, I copy+pasted the story from the chapter file, with autoflow on so I got the entire text with the endnotes. I then copy+pasted just the endnote part I wanted and put it in a separate text frame. (I did this because the editor and writer had repeatedly edited the text up to this point within Indesign, rather than use the original word file or muck about with multiple frame breaks) Rinse and repeat on the rest of the chapters, and now I have twelve sequential frames with all the correct endnotes, a bunch of blank spreads to delete, autoflow to turn off, and a correct endnotes section.
If/when they edit a chapter and endnote, I can simply copy+paste the chapter over to one frame and clip out the chapter text, rather than risk having to redo the entire damn thing. Also, I didn't want to link the same chapter file because I'm formatting the endnotes quite differently from the chapters and synchronising styles sometimes buggers that up.
Not very clever, basically copy+paste, but it gets the job done quickly and is easy to update.
We checked a bunch of similar books in the field and the going protocol is no page references, just chapter title, numbered list of footnotes, which makes this much easier.
posted by viggorlijah at 10:49 PM on July 27, 2014 [1 favorite]