slightly OT: Unusual problem with footnotes in Word doc

Iain Robinson

unread,

Jul 16, 2009, 6:34:51 AM7/16/09

to

Hi all

[I've asked this question on a couple of Word forums but have had no
replies, so I thought there will definitely be someone her who has
some relevant experience.]

I've received a Word document to use for a job we're doing in Indesign
and the author tells us that we need to fix the footnotes as after a
certain point half way through the file they go missing. The
references in the text are there (superior numbers) but they don't
appear at the foot of the page, or at the end of the text. Up to that
point the superior numbers in the text (and also in the footnotes
themselves) look like they are in a dotted box, which I guess means
they are 'proper' footnotes. The superior numbers in the text in the
second half of the file are not in little boxes but when I hover over
them I get a little rectangular symbol come up and if I hover on it
long enough some text appears, the footnote text. So the text is not
lost but I'm having problems getting to to come back as footnotes. I
can convert all the notes to endnotes, which works, but when I try to
convert them all to footnotes again it goes back to how it was
previously, except the superior numbers are no longer superior.

This document has been worked on and saved in WordPerfect previously.
I have read online that the problem is a consequence of that and the
solution is to manually create those footnotes again but this is a
400+ page document so I'm not keen to do that! I found that there were
a lot of "Section Break Continuous" before the problem so I took them
out and that magically makes the footnotes appear again but when I
place the file in Indesign that goes wrong too - it puts an extra
digit on the footnote numbers.

Please help! I'm using Word 2002 SP3 but I don't know what version the
author used to edit the file before me.

thanks,
Iain

Iain Robinson

unread,

Jul 17, 2009, 9:13:12 AM7/17/09

to

anybody?

Neil Gould

unread,

Jul 17, 2009, 11:23:11 AM7/17/09

to

Hi Iain,

Just to let you know that your message is read by some...

Unfortunately, in my experience, your best bet is to rebuild the footnotes
in the layout package, as Word is notorious for its mishandling of such
things, and the longer the document, the worse it gets. That said, InDesign
is not going to be a picnic for this length of document, either. Just get
used to smacking yourself from time to time. ;-)

Best regards,

--
Neil Gould
Terra Tu Technical Publishing
www.TerraTu.com

M Black

unread,

Jul 19, 2009, 11:23:19 AM7/19/09

to

Iain Robinson <crapher...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Don't know if this will help, but I sometimes find text going missing
when imported from Word. It usually turns out to be a huge indent which
makes the text disappear off the page when imported. Try highlighting
all the footnotes and making sure the indent is reasonable.

M Black

Iain Robinson

unread,

Jul 20, 2009, 3:52:37 AM7/20/09

to

On 19 July, 16:23, mbnils...@zetnet.co.uk (M Black) wrote:

Thanks both. It wasn't the indents so I guess I'll just have to allow
for rebuilding all the footnotes. Aargh!

thanks,
Iain

Jono Moore

unread,

Jul 21, 2009, 11:33:13 AM7/21/09

to

On Jul 20, 12:52 am, Iain Robinson <craphereple...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks both. It wasn't the indents so I guess I'll just have to allow
> for rebuilding all the footnotes. Aargh!

We've done footnote import with pretty good luck. Are you mapping them
to your own style when you bring them in? Can you tell if they are off
the page somewhere or missing entirely?