When placing footnotes in InDesign, you can choose either column-wide footnotes or footnotes that span the full width of the text frame. You can also mix the two styles of footnotes in the same document.
In the Layout panel of the Document Footnote Options dialog box, there is an option called Span Footnotes Across Columns. Choosing this establishes a document default for all footnotes to span the width of the frame.
If you open an old (pre-CC 2017) document, footnotes will only span single columns, though you can change the setting if you like. For a new document, the Span Footnotes option is selected by default.
You can override the document default in the new Object > Text Frame Options > Footnotes panel for the current text frame. To override the document default, select Enable Overrides, and check or uncheck Span Footnotes Across Columns. This same panel also includes the choices for Minimum Space Before First Footnote and Space Between Footnotes.
To support this feature, there is also an object style option: Text Frame Footnote Options. Spanning across columns is on by default, but it you select Enable Overrides, you can turn it off.
In addition, this same option is found in the Find/Change Object properties.
This article was last modified on January 16, 2025
This article was first published on November 1, 2016
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