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• • December 15, 2017 at 1:14 pm #100355
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    Hi all,

    We do a lot of books where the manuscript is provided as Word text with endnotes. Since InDesign has not handled live endnotes prior to CC018, we always imported these with the Endnotes box checked in Word, and then the notes came in at the end of the story as plain text, with numbers at the start of each paragraph. No coding, just text.

    In most of the books, these endnotes get moved to a section at the end of the book where they are listed by chapter; in other words, they don’t remain threaded to the original story. However, InDesign’s Endnotes feature doesn’t seem to handle this well. I’m still trying to figure out what it does and doesn’t allow. But if you break the link to the notes, the endnotes themselves all start with instead of a number, and the note refs in the text disappear.

    We also do Museum Exhibit catalogs where each catalog entry has its own endnotes, but they all run together, so it would go something like 8 paragraphs, endnotes, 6 more paragraphs, endnotes, etc. for 100 entries or more. These are all one threaded story.

    Having the notes be dynamic, so that they update if one is added or removed, is a nice feature but rarely comes into play. So, it would be nice if we had the option of bringing them in as plain text, the way it was before. But at the moment, CC2018 does not appear to allow me to import Word text with Endnotes and have the notes come in as text. If I break the links, I have to renumber the paragraphs (not too hard with numbered paragraphs feature), but I also lose the note refs in the text.

    So, in order to get MS Word endnotes to even import into InDesign as text that can be reliably moved around without destroying the Note Refs in the text, or losing their paragraph numbers, I have to go back to version CC2017.

    Does this jive with other people’s experience? I know I can use scripts by Peter Kahrel to make non-live endnotes dynamic; I don’t actually need that at the moment. What I would like is the ability to have CC2018 bring in the Endnotes but allow me to convert them to plain text without stripping the note refs.

  • December 15, 2017 at 2:58 pm #100356
    Jamie McKee

    Member

    Hi Matt-

    Your experience matches mine and my conclusions are the same: other than if you are writing in InDesign, CC2018’s Endnotes are very limited. If you are importing Word text with Endnotes and need to break the link to the notes, you’re better served by staying with CC 2017 or you’ll lose all the refs in the text.

    Like you, I import Word text with Endnotes written by other people. I do all cleanup and applying of styles, both paragraph and character, in Word. I then place the Word file into my InDesign template. My usual practice is to open the Endnotes in Word, copy them, then paste them at the end of the article or, into a collected Notes document for books where all the notes to the chapters appear together at the end of the book. They are not linked, but that is OK for what I do. I then delete the original endnotes, seen as the copy I placed at the end of the document is styled.

    Finally, something that may help you: you mentioned that “In most of the books, these endnotes get moved to a section at the end of the book where they are listed by chapter”. Presumably the headers of the pages of this “Notes” section say something like “Notes to pages 00–00.” If that is the case, I worked with Peter to develop a script that will go through the pages of your chapters and populate the headers of your Notes section with the appropriate page numbers. Saves somebody from having to leaf through all the pages to determine what notes fall on what pages. You can find the script here: https://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/endnote_running_headers.html and you can find a detailed walkthrough of how to use the script on my website here: https://mackeycomposition.com/resources/

    Happy to help out if you have other questions.

  • December 15, 2017 at 3:08 pm #100357
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    Jamie,

    Thanks for corroborating my experience. As for using a script to populate the subtitles, that’s cool – always good to know about these things. So far I’ve never used page #s in the subheads. We always use chapter titles and there are not so many that it needs to be scripted. But I can see how that could be handy in repetitive situations. We definitely use text variables for running footers etc. so I’m familiar with the idea. My rule of thumb is that if I have to do the same thing 3 times in a row, I should find a way to have the computer do it for me.

    FYI, I do as little as possible in Word; I vastly prefer working in the InDesign interface for applying styles. I do most of this with Multi Find Change, and at least I know that since I’m already in InDesign, whatever I do won’t get lost during an import.

    Funny, I never imagined that they could find a way to add a feature that would make InDesign worse re: endnotes, or that would prevent us from using the latest version. But the way the endnotes are now, it’s definitely worse than not being there at all. I guess we’ll have to add more control of the endnotes to the InDesign feature request list. And, keep working in CC2017 for books with endnotes.

  • December 15, 2017 at 3:32 pm #100358
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Seems like it should be straightforward (easy for me to say!) for a script to convert automatic endnotes into text… no? Just replace the endnote reference number with an actual number (or whatever) and then “break the link”?

  • December 15, 2017 at 3:40 pm #100359
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    Yes, if Peter can write scripts that do the opposite, I suppose he or someone else could whip up one that does this. I would certainly appreciate having it (i.e., I’d pay for it . . . ).

    It’s just too bad it is necessary, though. There must be some saying such as “First, do no harm” that applies to software development – i.e. don’t make a new feature that takes away the ability to do what people are already doing with the product.

  • December 15, 2017 at 4:45 pm #100361
    Jamie McKee

    Member

    Matt-

    I guess I’m one of those few people who don’t mind working in Word. One of the reasons is because of its Macros, which can record your actions as you do them. You can then turn it into a button that can be used on any file—no need to know any coding. And then there’s non-contiguous text selection. And being able to select an entire paragraph with a single click.

    But any way, yes, do file feature requests for Endnotes. I plan to do the same.

  • December 15, 2017 at 5:09 pm #100362
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    Glad I saw this thread as I was about to post something similar. I hope I don’t derail this thread, but it’s about end notes.

    In my case, they are un-numbered end notes. That is, there is no note number reference in text. It’s an actual phrase, then the notes section has the page number. We call it “trailing phrase notes.”

    How in the heck do I do that?

    Note: We import tagged text files via xTags.

    Additionally–we received a file from a publisher (that they originally worked on) and it seems they use the cross-reference feature. Which is fine and dandy. The page numbers change when text reflows, usually. But there are several cases where the cross reference marker was at the end of the paragraph and NOT right at the phrase, so the phrase is on page 96, but the paragraph return is on page 97. End notes shows as page 97 (which is wrong).

    Can I cut and paste the marker to the correct spot or what do I need to do to make it auto number as the marker is in the wrong place?

    Sorry for derailing Matt

  • December 18, 2017 at 5:46 pm #100379
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    Here’s a script to convert InDesign 2018 endnotes to static notes:
    https://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/footnote_endnote_conversion_cc2018.html

    > Can I cut and paste the marker to the correct spot

    The cross-reference? Yes, you can.

    P.

  • December 19, 2017 at 8:50 am #100386
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Wow! Thank you, Peter!

    (For everyone who finds his script useful: click the other links at the bottom of Peter’s page to find a “Make a Donation” button. If this saves you an hour — or a dozen! — then let him know financially.)

  • December 19, 2017 at 8:54 am #100387
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    I wholeheartedly, agree with David – Peter has written a zillion very useful scripts. If you use them for paying projects, please kick in a few bucks to show your appreciation! I’ve paid before and am paying again today for these CC2018 scripts.

  • December 19, 2017 at 9:52 am #100389
    Jamie McKee

    Member

    Hi Peter-

    Thanks (as always) for your script(s)! However, when I run the “Convert endnotes to static endnotes” script on a CC2018 document, it removes the endnote reference number in the text (it does convert the endnotes to static text though). Bug in your script? Am I doing something wrong?

    -Jamie

  • December 19, 2017 at 2:37 pm #100392
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    Difficult to say, Jamie. Could you send me the file so I can see what goes wrong?

  • December 19, 2017 at 4:26 pm #100393
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    Those script look great. I will check them out.

    Thanks

  • December 20, 2017 at 9:03 am #100398
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    The “Convert endnotes to static endnotes” script needed a fix, it’s updated and on the web.

    P.

  • May 22, 2018 at 12:15 pm #103920
    Peggy Issenman

    Member

    SOOO glad that I found these scripts as I had the same problem with importing endnotes into ID cc2018. And yes, the new live function endnotes in ID is almost useless. And will love to use the Notes running head as one client uses that in all of their books. Many thanks Peter!

  • May 25, 2018 at 2:20 am #103974
    Dieter Stockert

    Member

    I used to work with Calamus before switching to InDesign two years ago. And one of the things I was missing since that was the flexibility with footnotes: In Calamus you have to create separate text frames for the footnotes and you can place them everywhere on every page of your document. So it is only a matter of where you place the footnote frame (or the footnote frames) if you call them footnotes or endnotes. And you can place two footnote frames side by side to have the footnotes in two columns. Or you can place the footnote frames on top or in the middle of the page. If you have very long footnotes that don’t fit on the page you can decide how much lines you want to keep and how much lines will go to the threaded footnote frame on the next page simply by making the frame a little higher or smaller.

    On the negative side you have to care yourself if the footnotes are all on the corresponding page. That can be a lot of extra work if you have a scientific text with hundreds of pages and footnotes.

    Well, and now InDesign gives me a part of the best of both worlds with footnotes and endnotes.

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