Learn how to use the Footnote Continue Numbering script to continue footnote numbers across sections in a single document, or across documents in a book.
What is the Footnote Continue Numbering module?
When you create footnotes in Adobe InDesign, the footnote numbering scope is the story; footnote numbering can be set only at the level of the document. Therefore, if a document contains two or more stories with footnotes, the footnote numbering restarts at every story.
If you want the footnote numbering to continue between stories, you need a script.
The Footnote Continue Numbering script:
- Continues footnote numbering across sections in a single Adobe InDesign document. The script does this by threading main stories.
- Continues footnote numbering across documents in an InDesign book. The script does this by setting the footnote start number in each document.
Configure Footnote Continue Numbering in a workflow
Add Footnote Continue Numbering (FootnoteContinueNumbering.jsxbin) to the Page end and Section end events of either Create InDesign document or Create InDesign book.
For step-by-step instructions for adding a script to your workflow, see Deploying event scripts in a Typefi workflow.
Set up the template
Footnote Continue Numbering targets only main stories. Main story content is placed in Typefi Main Story Frames.
There are two types of main stories that must be ignored:
- Mini Main Story Frames. For technical reasons, every page must contain a Main Story Frame, so if no content is foreseen on a page, then place a very small, "mini", Main Story Frame on the page instead.
- Main story table of contents (TOCs). During the automated page composition process, Typefi generates a TOC in a Main Story Frame. Main story TOCs are not the same as Typefi TOCs which use a Typefi TOC Frame (its frame border is purple). Typefi TOCs are generated using InDesign's built-in functionality. Since Typefi TOCs are not main stories, they are ignored by the script.
To set up your Typefi-ready template to use Footnote Continue Numbering:
- Open the Layers panel (Window → Layers).
- Select the <text frame> representing the mini Main Story Frame or the Main Story Frame that will hold the Main Story TOC.
- Slow double-click (double-click, wait for a second, and then click again) <text frame> to rename it to miniMainStoryFrame (case-, space-, and underscore-insensitive) or TOC.
Dependencies
None.
How does the script work?
In InDesign, a document's footnote start number can be set only once, at the document level. Footnote numbering restarts at every new story. Therefore, in single-document jobs, if footnotes should be numbered continuously throughout the document, all main stories should be threaded. To number footnotes continuously in book jobs, a script must set each document's start number. The Footnote Continue Numbering script does both.
| Event | What the script does |
|---|---|
| Section end | In a book job, Footnote Continue Numbering records the document's last footnote number. In a document job, Footnote Continue Numbering records the last used Main Story Frame. |
| Page end | The script runs only at the first page of a section. In a book job, the script sets just document's footnote start number, informed by the value stored at the previous Section end event. In a document job, the script threads the page's Main Story Frame to the previous section's main story. |
Documents in which any stories have been threaded cannot be roundtripped, or converted from one format to another and back. To overcome this, the script records which stories were threaded. You can then use a separate script, FootnoteContinueNumbering_Unthread, to unthread the stories in an InDesign → Content XML workflow. Use FootnoteContinueNumbering_Unthread in the Run InDesign Script workflow action.
Additional footnote scripts
While not as common as Footnote Continue Numbering, the Footnote Fix Blank Page and Footnote Float Avoidance scripts can help further control where footnotes are placed in a document.
Footnote Fix Blank Page
In rare cases, InDesign documents with many footnotes—especially footnotes that break across pages—can include extra blank pages. This script removes these unnecessary blank pages.
How to configure Footnote Fix Blank Page in a workflow
Add Footnote Fix Blank Page (FootnoteFixBlankPage.jsxbin) to the Page End event of either Create InDesign document or Create InDesign book.
For step-by-step instructions for adding a script to your workflow, see Deploying event scripts in a Typefi workflow.
Dependencies
Do not use this script for documents that contain Floating Elements.
How Footnote Fix Blank Page works
First, the script checks if a text frame has any footnotes and its previous frame is empty. If so, the script tries to fix the empty frame by moving the empty frame up by a point, making it a point taller, making it a point wider—until the frame fills up.
If the script is not successful, the script logs a Story frame remains overset in the job log.
Footnote Float Avoidance
Typefi Elements are page items separate from the main story text, such as a sidebar or a pull-quote. A Floating Element is a type of Typefi Element where the main story wraps around it. A Floating Element can be placed anywhere on the page, according to its layout rules.
By default, if a Typefi-ready template includes footnotes and Floating Elements configured to be placed at the bottom of the page, the Floating Elements are placed after the footnotes. The Footnote Float Avoidance script keep the footnotes at the bottom of the page and places the Floating Element right above the footnotes.
Footnote Float Avoidance can also handle spanning and non-spanning footnotes in single and multi-column text frames.
How to configure Footnote Float Avoidance in a workflow
Add Footnote Float Avoidance (FootnoteFloatAvoidance.jsxbin) to the Page end event of either Create InDesign document or Create InDesign book.
For step-by-step instructions for adding a script to your workflow, see Deploying event scripts in a Typefi workflow.
Dependencies
None.
How Footnote Float Avoidance works
First, the script determines if a page contains any footnotes and if it does, if that page contains any floats placed at the foot of the page. If both are the case, then the script:
- Moves all Floating Elements to the top of the page.
- Determines the top of the footnote area.
- Moves the Floating Elements down so that they sit right before the footnotes.
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